Most Japanese Oppose Joining Anti-Iran Coalition: Report

Date: 20 August 2019 - 21:19

News ID: ۶۹۵۲۹

TEHRAN (Press TV) - A new poll shows that over half of voters oppose dispatching Japan’s Self-Defense Forces personnel to the Persian Gulf to join a U.S.-led coalition in a purported mission of protecting maritime shipping lanes in the Middle East.
According to the survey, 57.1 percent of voters said Japan should not send SDF forces to the Middle East, while 28.2 percent said it should.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted by Kyodo News .
Japanese government sources said earlier this month that the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reluctant to participate in the U.S.-led coalition amid concerns about possible damage to Tokyo-Tehran friendly ties.
As a compromise, the sources told Kyodo news agency, Japan is considering sending Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers and P-3C Orion surveillance planes to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between war-torn Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
"We can't just do nothing," a senior Abe administration official said.
The Japanese ships would not be part of the U.S.-proposed mission, though the area of their operations would overlap.
The United States has been trying to persuade its allies into an international coalition with the declared aim of providing "security” for merchant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — though which about a fifth of all oil consumed globally pass —and other strategic Middle Eastern shipping lanes.
Washington claims Tehran has played a role in two separate attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman in May and June, without providing any credible evidence to support the accusations, which Iran has categorically rejected.