Australia to join Gulf maritime security mission

Australia will join the US-led mission to protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions with Iran, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced yesterday. Morrison said Australia would send a “modest” contribution -- including a frigate, a P8 maritime surveillance aircraft and support staff -- to the mission, which will also involve British and Bahraini forces.

“Our contribution will be limited in scope and it will be time-bound,” Morrison said, expressing concern about security incidents in the vital shipping lane in the past few months. “This destabilising behaviour is a threat to Australian interests in the region,” he said in a joint statement with his foreign and defence ministers. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper had pressed for Australia’s help patrolling the strategic waterway during a visit to Sydney earlier this month.

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said Australian military staff would in coming weeks join the security operation’s headquarters in Bahrain, which announced its involvement in the operation on Tuesday. The P8 Poseidon aircraft will patrol the region for a month, later in the year.

The frigate, with a crew of some 170, will not be deployed to the joint operation until January and take part for six months, she said. Morrison stressed that the deployment would be “modest, meaningful and time-limited” while defence experts said it was likely a “re-tasking” of planned deployments to the region to satisfy US requests.