French President Emmanuel Macron said he’s working with partners to prepare a "purely defensive" mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by escorting ships, once the "most intense phase of the conflict" in the Middle East has passed.
France is deploying eight warships, two amphibious helicopter carriers and the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and off the coast of Hormuz.
Macron said a coalition of partners -- coordinated by and headquartered in Greece -- had already been formed.
“We are in the process of setting up ...a purely defensive, purely escort mission, which must be prepared together with both European and non-European states, and whose purpose is to enable, as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended, the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which is essential to international trade, but also to the circulation of gas and oil which must be able to be transported out of this region again,” Macron said.
Ali Larijani, head of Iran's supreme national security council, said in a post on X on Monday that it's "unlikely any security will be achieved in the Strait of Hormuz amid the fires of war ignited by the United States and Israel."
Larijani also implied that France has been supporting the war and "contributing to fanning it."
-ABC News’ Tom Soufi Burridge