LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The UK will send a destroyer to the Middle East ahead of any international mission to help protect shipping in the key Strait of Hormuz, its defense ministry (MoD) said Saturday.

“The pre-positioning of HMS Dragon is part of prudent planning that will ensure that the UK is ready, as part of a multinational coalition jointly led by the UK and France, to secure the strait, when conditions allow,” an MoD spokesperson told Agence France-Presse.

Britain and France said last month that military plans to secure the Strait of Hormuz were coming together and would succeed in restoring trade flows through the vital passage. 

The MoD said deploying HMS Dragon would strengthen the confidence of commercial shipping and support mine clearance efforts once hostilities end.  

At a two-day meeting in London in April involving more than 44 countries, military planners discussed the practicalities of a multinational mission led by the UK and France to protect navigation in the key waterway.

Some 40 countries are understood to have agreed to participate in plans for the mission to free up navigation in Hormuz.

Before the United States-Israel war on Iran started on 28 February, about a fifth of the world’s oil was shipped through the strait.

But that has dwindled in past months. Iran largely closed the strait, throwing global markets into turmoil and driving up oil prices. The US later imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports in response.

On Saturday Iran questioned the seriousness of American diplomacy to bring about a ceasefire in the wake of renewed naval clashes in the Gulf region.

In an incident on Friday, a US fighter jet fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers that Washington accused of challenging its naval blockade of Iran’s ports. The US action prompted Iranian retaliatory attacks.