Japan says bar high for sending warships to protect Gulf oil lane

A senior Japanese policy adviser said on Sunday that the threshold is "extremely high" for Tokyo to send its warships to help protect a shipping lane for oil in the Middle East, hours after US President Donald Trump's call for other countries to do so.



Two weeks after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Gulf region remained in the grip of conflict, sending oil prices soaring as Iran has choked off the vital Strait of Hormuz and attacked Gulf energy facilities.



The world's number four economy is the fifth-biggest importer of oil - 95 per cent of it from the Middle East and 70 per cent passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now effectively closed.



Takayuki Kobayashi, the policy chief of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said Sunday "I regard the threshold as extremely high" for sending Japanese navy ships to the region under existing Japanese laws, T



"Legally speaking, we do not rule out the possibility, but given the current situation in which this conflict is ongoing, I believe this is something that must be considered with great caution," Kobayashi added.



Sending its Self-Defense Forces abroad is politically sensitive in the officially pacifist Japan, as many voters support the US-imposed, war-renouncing 1947 constitution.