Updated ,first published
Washington: Australia should send military assets to the Gulf to help protect commercial shipping, former prime minister Scott Morrison has urged, as US bombing of Iran intensifies and a crisis redevelops in the Strait of Hormuz.
US forces completed two waves of strikes against the Islamic regime on Wednesday (US time), and fired at an unladen oil tanker bound for Iran’s Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, as it stepped up the naval blockade of Iranian ports.
Morrison, speaking on the sidelines of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) in Washington, said it was now time for Australia to consider what military assets it could proactively send to the Gulf to defend free shipping and global energy supplies.
“We should be following our national interest, and we have serious national interests at stake when it comes to fuel security and what’s happening in the Gulf,” he said.
“It’s important that we be proactive in the national interest to be making a contribution that helps resolve the issue, including the use of our defence assets.”
Morrison dispatched a navy frigate and troops to the Persian Gulf in 2020, along with Britain, after tensions between Iran and the US led the regime to attack vessels in the Strait during Trump’s first administration.
However, there are doubts about whether Australia’s small, stretched and ageing fleet would be useful in such a mission today. Morrison said he did not have access to classified intel, but there would be some form of useful military contribution that Australia could make.
“All I can tell you is what we did last time, and that is I sent a frigate to the Gulf … There was a response to our national interests which were engaged by this issue, so the government should be doing what is necessary to assure that national interest is addressed.”
Morrison is now vice chairman of consultancy American Global Strategies, a role in which he deals with senior US political and defence officials.
Shadow defence minister James Paterson, also speaking on the sidelines of the AALD, said it was worth considering as long as it did not detract from Australia’s operations in the Indo-Pacific.
“For Australia, the region of the world that matters most is the Indo-Pacific, and I wouldn’t lightly take away resources from that region for another,” he said.
The Australian government sent an E-7 Wedgetail surveillance aircraft to assist the United Arab Emirates early in the conflict.
The government has maintained that no request for additional military assistance has been made by the Trump administration, and said on Thursday that it hopes the US and Iran can get back to the negotiating table.
“We’ve been clear for some time that we do not want to see further escalation. We want to see a return to the ceasefire and for the US and Iran to continue negotiations,” a government spokesperson said.
“For that to happen, Iran must ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and cease its attacks on commercial shipping.”
US Central Command (Centcom) on Thursday (AEST) said the latest strikes had hit Iran’s command centres, air defence sites, missile and drone capabilities and coastal surveillance facilities, and were aimed at degrading Iran’s ability to menace ships in the strait.
It was the first time since the war resumed that US forces had completed two waves of strikes in a single day. Meanwhile, Iran vowed to maintain “Iranian arrangements” in the strait.
Oil futures continued to trade at around $US85, despite the worsening situation in the strait. The American military fired upon an unladen oil tanker heading for an Iranian port, in the first major incident since the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz restarted.
US Centcom said its forces hit the Curacao-flagged M/T Belma, which was attempting to sail to Iran’s Kharg Island, after it ignored multiple warnings that it was violating the blockade.
“A US aircraft disabled the vessel after firing hellfire missiles into the ship’s smokestack,” it said. “The ship is no longer transiting to Iran.”
US forces have also redirected two other commercial vessels in the first 24 hours of the blockade. The ships complied with the orders.
News agency Reuters reported that recent waves of US strikes against Iran were also targeting Iranian military capabilities that the US would want to destroy before executing more complex operations against the regime, citing three US officials.
The strikes strengthened the list of additional military options that US President Donald Trump could use if he chose to escalate the war, Reuters reported.
Trump has also publicly foreshadowed an attack on Pickaxe Mountain, an underground nuclear complex near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that the US bombed last year.
“We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt this week.
He has also threatened strikes on Iran’s oil facilities on Kharg Island, or even seizing the island by force. “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that,” he told Fox News.
With the conflict intensifying and prospects of another peace deal appearing to fade, the Iranian regime also stepped up its rhetoric.
Mohammad Bagher-Ghalibaf, the powerful parliamentary speaker who negotiated and signed last month’s Memorandum of Understanding, said Iran was in “an essential and existential war with America”, and that it would avenge the death of assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei suggested the regime was not interested in returning to talks. “We currently have no plans for negotiations and are focused on defence,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-owned Press TV.
Trump said the opposite, however, to a defence industry audience in Pennsylvania. “They want to settle so badly. They don’t like what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ll find out whether we settle with them or we just finish it off … They’ll be defeated very soon.”
Meanwhile, in an apparent gesture of goodwill, Iran released a US citizen, Dena Karari, who had been trapped there since December 2024.
Karari’s lawyer, Jared Genser, said his client had been detained on bogus accusations of espionage, and thanked Trump for his “extraordinary and relentless efforts” to free her.
Separately, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced all American service members over the age of 30 will be subject to testosterone screening as part of their annual health assessment.
Those under 30 can get a voluntary test, and testosterone replacement therapy will be available to anyone who needs it. It was part of a push to create a “High-T Department of War”, Hegseth said.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.