KRABI, Thailand — 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.
Neither China’s Foreign Ministry nor the Chinese Embassy in Washington responded to inquiries.
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.
In March, a Thai-flagged bulk carrier, the Mayuree Naree, was struck by Iranian missiles while attempting to cross, killing three of the ship’s Thai crew members. The ship’s operator, Precious Shipping, said it had gotten clearance, but Iranian authorities said it had not. An additional 20 crew members were rescued.
“Our ship was not stopped from exiting the Strait of Hormuz. We did NOT receive any message at any time from any one that we should NOT exit the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz,” Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping, said in a statement.
“We don’t know what happened,” Sihasak said, adding that an investigation is underway.
Sihasak traveled last week to Oman to advocate for safe passage of vessels through the strait and said he left with the impression that the Omanis were not optimistic about a ceasefire in the near term. Sihasak said he shared the pessimism because it seems that the Trump administration’s objectives “are shifting all the time.” At one point, the goal appeared to be regime change. Now, it seems to be about ending Iran’s nuclear program.
“There’s a lot of unpredictability in the U.S. government policy,” Sihasak said. This is not limited to the war, he added. Trump’s sweeping tariff campaign has surprised many allies. His rapid dismantling of U.S. aid programs has left poor communities across the world exposed to sickness and disaster. In comparison, Sihasak said, China has presented itself as a more consistent partner to countries in Asia.
“It doesn’t mean that China doesn’t also behave as a superpower when it comes to core interests, right? But we know what those core interests are,” Sihasak said. “This is not about us taking sides in the geopolitical competition. It’s about what the U.S. is doing, which is forcing us to rethink some relationships.”
Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.
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