“At the moment the Britons would rather join an American mission. We won’t do that,” Maas told reporters on Monday, Reuters reported.
“We want a European mission,” he said, adding that the issue was not off the agenda but it would take time to convince the European Union to carry out such a mission.
The US Embassy in Berlin said on last Tuesday the United States had asked Germany to join France and Britain in a mission to supposedly protect shipping through the strait Germany rejected the request at the time.
Washington has lately adopted a quasi-warlike posture against Tehran, and intensified its provocative military moves in the Middle East, among them the June 20 incursion of advanced US-made RQ-4 Global Hawk into Iranian airspace over territorial waters off the coastal province of Hormozgan.
The UK has also joined the US in fueling tensions with Iran by seizing an Iranian-owned supertanker in the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4 in an apparent act of “maritime piracy.”
- source : Tasnim
