By Alexander Cornwell
TEL AVIV, March 17 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates may join a U.S.-led effort to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran all but shut the vital waterway to ships as Tehran wages war with Israel and the United States, a senior Emirati official said on Tuesday.
Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said talks were ongoing and no formal plan had been agreed, but that "big countries" in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe bore responsibility for ensuring
the flow of trade and energy.
"This is something that is in the interest of everybody," he told an online event hosted by the American think tank the Council on Foreign Relations. "Everybody has a responsibility."
Several of Washington's allies have already rebuffed President Donald Trump's call to send warships to escort tankers through the critical waterway, with some criticizing the U.S. and Israel for failing to consult them before launching the war on February 28.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway at the entrance to the Gulf between Iran and Oman, is one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, and a key route for global shipping.
Roughly a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies normally pass through the strait each day, but Iran has largely shut it, raising fears of a global energy shock.
The waterway is vital to the economy of the UAE, a major oil exporter and trade hub. Iran has repeatedly attacked an Emirati port located outside the Gulf that is used to load oil exports.
Gargash said that "some limited Iranian attacks in the region" had been expected if negotiations with the U.S. over Tehran's nuclear program collapsed, but not on the scale that Iran has carried out, which he described as "full throttle".
The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran while efforts to secure a nuclear agreement between Washington and Tehran were still under way. Tehran retaliated by launching missiles and drones at Israel and at U.S. military bases in the region, but also attacking airports, ports and apartment towers in the Gulf.
The UAE has faced more Iranian attacks than any other country in the region, including Israel. Tehran has claimed that Emirati territory was used to launch an attack against Iran, an accusation that the oil-rich Gulf state has rejected.
The war, now in its 18th day, has killed more than 2,000 people, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, but also in Israel, Iraq and across the Gulf states, including six in the UAE.
The UAE has long maintained deep trade ties with Iran despite strained political relations, but ties have deteriorated since the outbreak of the war, and Gargash said Abu Dhabi was not engaged in "active" talks with Tehran.
He said that once the war ends, there would need to be an arrangement guaranteeing that Iran cannot use its nuclear, missile or drone programs "to terrorize the region".
"The solution has to guarantee for the region that we are not living under the menace of an Iranian nuclear program or under the menace of an Iranian missile and drone program," he said.
Gargash offered no criticism of Israel or the United States for carrying out the strikes that ignited the war. He said he expected Iran's repeated attacks on Gulf states would ultimately strengthen Israel's ties with Arab countries it already has relations with and open channels with others.
The UAE and fellow Gulf state Bahrain established official diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Other Gulf states, such as Qatar, have maintained ties without full diplomatic relations.
Iranian attacks would also strengthen the role of Washington in the region, Gargash said.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)
