A French general has said joining President Donald Trump’s war is like buying a discounted ticket for the Titanic after it had already hit the iceberg.
Retired three-star general and former commander of the French Foreign Legion, Michel Yakovleff, appeared on LCI, where he reeled off all the reasons not to follow Trump into battle.
The president has endured a chastening start to the week after ally after ally—including the U.K., France, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and even China—rejected the idea of offering military support for his war with Iran.
“You can’t have an American operation where they’re bombing whatever they can, and then below that, the Europeans doing something else,” Yakovleff said. “No, no, no, it has to be one sole operation, under a NATO flag. I don’t think he’s understood that.”
He then went further, rejecting the idea that European ships would enforce his blockade while U.S. forces nearby waged a broader war all around them. Instead, he said the U.S. needed to make it crystal clear what it wanted from the conflict.
“The Americans have to put this in writing. Not tweets, not things that change every two minutes,” he said.
Yakovleff then claimed that sending ships to help Trump went beyond simply putting those vessels at risk. Instead, he said it opened the door to becoming involved in the conflict’s politics.
“It’s not a question of military means, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “It’s that he wants to share the political risk… not the military risk.”
His words echoed those of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who said, “What does Trump expect from a handful of European frigates that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?” the BBC reports. “This is not our war. We have not started it.”
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for oil to the rest of the world. Around one-fifth of the world’s supply flows through it in peacetime, but since Trump’s attack on February 28, Iran has warned that ships’ safety cannot be guaranteed.
Tankers have come under fire, leading to a supply chain backlog and at least 17 vessels being hit. Meanwhile, gas prices are soaring.
Yakovleff, who served in NATO roles for seven years, has previously warned that Trump’s attacks on the alliance could destroy it.
“He would let us down whenever it suited him,” he continued on LCI, before stating, “On the Titanic, it appears the captain wanted to sell tickets off cheaply for the dinner-dance after hitting the iceberg. It’s not the moment to be buying a cut-price ticket for the Titanic.”
“And the last argument is American: you don’t reinforce failure. I learnt that at the U.S. Army War College. You don’t reinforce failure, you move on, you find something else.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron had already poured cold water on the idea of getting involved in the fighting directly. Instead, he said he would look into organizing a fleet of escorts to help ships navigate the strait, but only after the “hottest phase” of the fighting was over, according to the BBC.
U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer struck a similar tone, saying in a news conference on Monday that he was looking at a “viable plan” but was “not at the point of decisions yet.”
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy boss, Kaja Kallas, told Reuters that “Nobody is ready to put their people in harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz.”
