SEOUL, Jan 21, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – South Korea will send a naval destroyer and
300 troops to the Strait of Hormuz, its defence ministry said Tuesday, after
pressure from its ally the US in the face of tensions between Washington and
Tehran.
Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping vessels in the
strait, a strategic choke point for the world’s oil trade where the US has
deployed a naval mission.
But the request put Seoul in a dilemma: it has had diplomatic relations
with Tehran since the early 1960s and until last year Iran was one of the
resource-poor South’s key oil suppliers.
The defence ministry said in a statement that Seoul had decided to
“temporarily expand” the deployment area of its anti-piracy military unit
operating off the coast of Somalia to include the Persian Gulf and the Gulf
of Oman, which are linked by the Strait of Hormuz.
It would not be part of the US naval mission, it insisted — although two
liaison officers would be sent to the US headquarters for “information
sharing”.
Seoul and Washington are in a security alliance but their relations have
been strained by the Trump administration’s demands the South pay billions of
dollars more towards the costs of 28,500 US troops stationed in the country
to protect it from the nuclear-armed North.
US Ambassador Harry Harris last week urged Seoul to join in the naval
mission, saying “very few countries have a greater need” to take part as the
South “gets 70 percent of its oil supplies from the Middle East”.
Trump abandoned the landmark 2015 deal curtailing Tehran’s nuclear
programme and imposed economic sanctions against Iran, prompting South Korean
exports to the country to fall nearly 90 percent last year.