As U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, Washington is once again turning to its friends and allies to help manage the fallout.
For Japan and South Korea, two of America’s closest allies in Asia, the stakes are immediate. Both depend heavily on energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has managed to effectively close, and both have already felt the shock in the form of rising oil prices and market volatility.
Yet as calls have emerged from Washington for a more direct role—escort missions, minesweeping, or other maritime support—Tokyo and Seoul are showing hesitation. That hesitation is not without precedent. Two decades ago, during the Iraq War, both countries faced a similar dilemma. Back then, however, they ultimately chose to support the United States despite serious domestic and legal constraints.
There are certainly many reasons for caution with Iran, not least the domestic political risks and the combustibility of a conflict unfolding in what some describe as a “Hormuz kill box.” But above all, what has changed is not simply the nature of the conflict. It is the level of trust in American leadership.
During the Iraq War, Japan and South Korea were led by very different governments. Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was an unabashed champion of the U.S.–Japan alliance, while South Korea’s President Roh Moo-hyun entered office with a more skeptical view of Washington and a desire for greater autonomy, including over wartime operational control.
In both countries, public opposition to supporting U.S. war efforts in the Middle East was intense. South Korea witnessed large-scale protests, while in Japan, constitutional constraints forced the government to tightly define the scope of its involvement.
And yet, both governments contributed. Japan dispatched roughly 550 Self-Defense Forces personnel under the Iraq Special Measures Law, formally for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance in non-combat areas, while separately providing logistical support through refueling missions in the Indian Ocean. South Korea deployed some 3,600 troops at its peak, making it one of the largest foreign contributors after the United States and Britain. These were not politically easy decisions. They were taken at real domestic cost.
The difference lay in how Washington approached its allies. The Bush administration, whatever its faults, treated alliance management as part of the war effort. It invested real effort in assembling and sustaining a coalition, cajoled key allies, and gave governments enough political cover to present their support as part of a broader international effort. Even a controversial war was wrapped in a narrative that allies could repeat without immediately collapsing under domestic scrutiny.
That sense of shared purpose is far less evident today.
In recent days, President Donald Trump has alternated between urging countries to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and boasting that the United States does not, in fact, need their assistance. This is not merely a stylistic inconsistency. For allied governments, it raises a basic question: Is the U.S. pursuing a strategy, or acting on the impulses of one mercurial man?
Without clear war aims, participation becomes politically indefensible. Is the objective to degrade Iran’s military or change its regime? How long might such a mission last? What does success look like? These are not academic questions. They are political realities that leaders in Tokyo and Seoul must confront in nations already wary of Trump’s unpredictability and heavy-handed treatment of allies.
If Iraq offered a precedent for participation, it also offered a warning. What began as a defined intervention evolved into long, costly engagements with uncertain endpoints. That experience has not been forgotten. If anything, it has made policymakers—and their publics—more cautious about being drawn into another Middle Eastern conflict with no clear off-ramp.
This is why persuasion and clarity matter more today. Yet through most of Trump’s tenure, Washington has treated even close partners as objects of economic pressure, whether through tariffs, cost-sharing demands, or blunt negotiations over investment.
None of this severs alliances, of course. But it erodes trust and makes it harder for allied governments to ask voters to bear risk for a partner that often sounds like a creditor.
The way this crisis has unfolded only sharpens that hesitation. Unlike the long diplomatic buildup that preceded the Iraq War, the current escalation has left allies reacting to events rather than shaping them. They are being asked to consider military engagement in a situation in which they had little say, under conditions that remain fluid.
Even if one assumes that the Iran gambit is ultimately aimed at squeezing China further, the burden it places on Japan and South Korea is difficult to justify.
During the Iraq War, Tokyo and Seoul ultimately supported Washington despite deep reservations, in part because they could present that decision as participation in a broader strategic enterprise. Today, the reluctance is a sign of diminished confidence. Allies are not necessarily refusing to help. They are simply refusing to guess.
If Washington wants more from its closest partners in Asia, it will have to rebuild that confidence. That means offering clarity where there is now ambiguity, consultation where there has been surprise, and a sense of shared purpose in place of shifting demands.
Until then, hesitation may come to define the relationship for years to come.
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