Japan Holds the Line on Warships at White House Summit as Trump Threatens Iran's Oil Island

WASHINGTON — Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, refusing to commit warships to the American campaign to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while signaling Japan would look for other ways to help — and offering Tokyo’s diplomatic channel to Tehran as a substitute for the military commitment Trump is seeking.

The roughly 30-minute public appearance in the Oval Office, followed by a closed-door meeting that ran long enough to cancel a planned working lunch, produced a $40 billion agreement to build advanced small modular nuclear reactors in the United States through a partnership between GE Vernova and Japan’s Hitachi, with sites in Tennessee and Alabama.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, had briefly spiked above $119 per barrel earlier Thursday — driven by Iranian missile strikes on a Qatari liquefied natural gas export facility, part of Tehran’s widening retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure. By the time the two leaders emerged, prices had pulled back sharply, with Brent trading near $108 and West Texas Intermediate futures retreating to around $94.

Trump, for his part, left open whether escalation was coming.