U.S. offers no help with Iran war’s fallout, Thai foreign minister says

The Trump administration has not offered any direct help to Thailand, a long-standing U.S. treaty ally, as it struggles with the wide-ranging economic damage from the American-Israeli war against Iran, Thailand’s foreign minister, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Absent support from the United States, Thailand is approaching U.S. rivals Russia and China for help.

“I think they’re aware that there are consequences from the war,” Sihasak said, referring to Trump administration officials. “But they haven’t come out to talk to us about how they can help. They haven’t approached us directly saying, ‘Oh, we understand that you have to endure the impact, and we can help you out.’”

The only gesture, he added, was President Donald Trump’s offer for countries in need of fuel to buy American oil and gas.

“Buy oil from the United States of America,” Trump said during a prime-time address this month. “We have plenty.”

As the war against Iran stretches beyond two months, the cost for countries in Asia is escalating.

While the economic disruption has begun to bite in the U.S., its effects have been much more widespread and painful in Asia, which is more reliant than any other region on Middle Eastern fuel and fertilizer. Hopes for a ceasefire have dimmed after plans for a new round of negotiations in Pakistan fell apart and the U.S. and Iran stepped up their blockades of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Our position is that this war should not have taken place in the first place,” Sihasak said in an interview Saturday from the southern province of Krabi, where he was hosting the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi. “We don’t want to condemn the U.S. directly. But this is something that should not have started.”

Thailand, which hosts logistics and refueling hubs for U.S. military forces in Asia, has struggled to compete against wealthier countries to afford replacements for its shipments of fuel and fertilizer stuck in the Middle East. The price of urea fertilizer, essential to Thailand’s more than 10 million farmers, has nearly doubled since the start of the war, farmers’ groups say. This month, the price of diesel reached a historic high.

Desperate to secure fertilizer before the start of the country’s planting season in May, Thailand’s minister of agriculture and cooperatives recently traveled to Moscow to negotiate with Russian officials. The country is also trying to procure Russian crude, though concerns over potential violations of U.S. sanctions have held back Thai banks from proceeding, Sihasak said.

In his meetings with Wang, Sihasak said, he asked Beijing for help in facilitating the safe passage of eight Thai vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Wang told him that China has 70 of its own vessels stranded at the chokepoint that it is struggling to get free, Sihasak said.

China was the top importer of oil through the narrow waterway before the war, but Chinese authorities have not said publicly how many of their vessels are stuck there. The figure shared with Sihasak could include ships that are operated by Chinese companies, owned by Chinese entities or ferrying goods to China.

The spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said in a statement that he did not have “specific figures” for the number of Chinese ships at the strait. “China hopes that all parties will work together to prevent the situation in the strait from deteriorating further,” Liu said.

Ship-traffic data suggests that despite its close economic and security ties to Iran, China has not been significantly more successful in freeing its vessels from the blockades and is even lagging behind some countries, including India, said Muyu Xu of the maritime analytics firm Kpler. “At this point, China’s exposure to the Middle East is still quite big,” Xu said.

In a call to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping criticized the disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — his first public comment on the fallout of the war — in what many analysts interpreted as an expression of Beijing’s rising frustration.

“The Strait of Hormuz should maintain normal passage, as this serves the common interests of regional countries and the international community,” Xi said, according to a Foreign Ministry readout.

Though ship movements through the strait increased slightly after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in mid-April, traffic has stalled again amid resurgent threats from both sides. Even if vessels can procure permission for passage on paper, there are other risks to consider, analysts say, including miscommunication and mines that have been placed in and around the strait.