When a president declares war and then asks others to finish the job, the request tests not only military capacity but political legitimacy. Donald Trump’s public push to assemble a multinational force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — demanding that “about seven” oil-dependent countries join a mission to police the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoint — has stalled. Key NATO and Asian partners have declined to commit. The United States now faces a narrowing set of options, none of them clean, all of them costly, and each carrying the real possibility of either a prolonged stalemate or a wider war.

The administration’s public posture has been characteristically twofold: loudly demand allied participation while simultaneously asserting that the United States can act alone if necessary. That posture has produced predictable friction. Several European and Asian governments have publicly declined to send warships or signaled deep reluctance, citing escalation risk and domestic political costs. The refusal of key partners to sign on has transformed what was intended as a legitimizing coalition into a diplomatic liability — and has left Washington holding a military operation whose costs are already falling on allies who were never consulted about whether to start it.

The options that remain are three, and each involves a distinct trade-off between speed and legitimacy that the administration has shown little appetite for acknowledging publicly.

The first is a narrow regional coalition assembled from Gulf states and, potentially, Israel. This option is considerably less available than it appears on paper. Gulf states are not simply reluctant partners weighing abstract........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)