The British Royal Navy (RN) announced May 11 that its destroyer the HMS Dragon “is heading to the Middle East ahead of a potential multinational Strait of Hormuz mission.” The Royal Navy statement continues, “The Type 45 destroyer will forward deploy to ensure the U.K. can contribute to a future multinational mission to secure the critical waterway and safeguard freedom of navigation, following a sustainable ceasefire.”
To forward position a British destroyer to be deployed inside or in the vicinity of an ongoing war involving the Strait of Hormuz is very dangerous. However, the U.K. is not acting alone, but as part of a larger operation involving France, and 40 other nations, largely European, and many of them NATO members. The British are coordinating them. This force of unwanted outsiders would likely create provocative incidents, which would deliberately escalate, not solve, the Iran crisis. Thus, it would undermine the work that nations including China, Pakistan, Oman, Iran, to an extent Saudi Arabia, and other nations, have expended tens of thousands of hours to bring the Iran war to an end.
The HMS Dragon is of the type of British destroyer that typically carries a crew of roughly 200 sailors and officers and is equipped with “a Sea Viper missile system to help safeguard U.K. assets and interests—assisted by Wildcats from 815 Naval Air Squadron equipped with Marlet missiles,” according to the RN.
