France’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier strike group crossed the Suez Canal on Wednesday and is heading toward the southern Red Sea, the French Ministry of Armed Forces said in a statement carried by Xinhua.
The deployment to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is intended to support a multinational maritime security initiative being jointly developed by France, Britain and partner countries, the ministry said. The carrier group’s mission is to assess the regional operational environment ahead of the initiative’s launch and to provide additional crisis-response options to strengthen regional security. The ministry stressed the deployment was separate from ongoing military operations in the region and was designed to complement the existing security framework.
The Anglo-French initiative was unveiled at an international summit on the Strait of Hormuz hosted in Paris on April 17, which brought together representatives of 51 countries. Following the meeting, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said France and Britain would lead a multinational mission to help safeguard shipping routes “when conditions permit,” describing the planned operation as strictly defensive in nature and focused on reassuring commercial maritime traffic and supporting mine-clearing.
The carrier movement comes the same day Washington circulated a one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding to Tehran proposing an end to the war and a 30-day window to negotiate a detailed Hormuz and nuclear settlement, and hours after President Donald Trump paused “Operation Freedom”, the US Navy’s escort programme through the strait.
A French naval contribution to the strait was previously signalled when the CMA CGM cargo ship CMA San Antonio was struck by a projectile inside Hormuz on Tuesday, the first attack on a major European-flagged vessel since the war began. That incident strengthened European calls for a coordinated escort regime independent of the US naval blockade on Iranian ports.
Source: NewsFirst (citing Xinhua).
