The Royal Navy In The Gulf – Analysis


The Royal Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf typically includes a Type 45 destroyer and a squadron of minehunters supported by an RFA Bay-class mothership. 

Photo Credit: LA(Phot) Gary Weatherston, Wikimedia Commons

March 30, 2026 
Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute
By Dr. Emma Salisbury


(FPRI) — The Royal Navy is set to take a leading role in a multinational “Hormuz Coalition” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ensure safe passage for merchant vessels. Britain brings considerable expertise to the table, particularly in the mine countermeasures capabilities that the US Navy currently lacks. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has cautioned, however, that reopening the strait is “not a simple task” and that any sustained effort would require broad coalition support given the narrow geography and residual threats from mines, drones, fast boats, and missiles. Crucially, any such plan would likely not be enacted until a cessation in hostilities.

This is not the first time that Britain has operated naval forces in the Gulf—far from it. But the Royal Navy is currently very stretched with no permanent Gulf presence, and the UK government keeps delaying decisions on defense investment. In such a context, it remains to be seen how much capability is actually deployable, and for how long.
Britain in the Gulf

Britain has a long history in the Persian Gulf that predates the formation of most of the states that now border it. For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Royal Navy policed its waters, suppressed piracy along the Trucial Coast, and enforced the treaty relationships that bound the sheikhdoms of the lower Gulf to London. When Britain withdrew from east of Suez in 1971—one of the more consequential strategic decisions of the post-war era—it did not abandon the Gulf entirely. It simply changed the nature of its commitment, from imperial presence to expeditionary partnership.

The Armilla Patrol, established in 1980 in response to the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, is a very pertinent example of that commitment. As the two Gulf powers began attacking each other’s shipping in what became known as the Tanker War, Britain deployed frigates and destroyers to protect vessels sailing under the Red Ensign. The patrol was never large—typically one or two surface combatants supplemented by a Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ship—but it was continuous, professional, and symbolically significant. It signaled that Britain regarded the free passage of Gulf shipping as a vital national interest, and that it was prepared to back that judgement with steel.


The Tanker War years produced some of the most intense operational experiences the Royal Navy has accumulated in recent decades. British warships operated in an environment where the threat came not from a peer adversary’s battle fleet but from aircraft, mines, and small craft—precisely the combination that Iran has refined and extended in the years since. The minesweepers of the Royal Navy worked in some of the most hazardous waters in the world, sweeping for Iranian mines that had been laid indiscriminately across international shipping lanes. It was unglamorous, dangerous, and essential work.

Operation Granby—Britain’s contribution to the 1991 Gulf War—brought the Royal Navy into the Gulf in much greater force. A task group built around HMS Ark Royal contributed to the allied campaign to liberate Kuwait. Destroyers and frigates provided air defense and surface warfare support. Mine countermeasures vessels, working alongside allied counterparts, tackled the extensive Iraqi minefield that had been laid in the northern Gulf. The lessons of that campaign, in particular the enduring centrality of mine warfare in Gulf operations, were noted but imperfectly absorbed by the US defense establishment, which subsequently allowed the US Navy’s mine countermeasures capabilities to atrophy.


The years following the Gulf War saw presence continue in various forms, with Royal Navy frigates rotating through the Gulf on deployments that combined maritime security operations with the enforcement of sanctions against Iraq. When coalition forces returned to the Gulf in 2003, the Royal Navy again played a significant role: HMS Ark Royal led a task group that included frigates, destroyers, and submarines. Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade conducted an amphibious assault on the Al-Faw peninsula—one of the most complex opposed landings attempted by British forces—while Royal Navy helicopters provided close air support and casualty evacuation. The integration of maritime and land power in that campaign reflected a level of joint capability that, two decades later, Britain is struggling to maintain.

The most direct confrontations with Iran in recent years have come not in open warfare but in the grey zone of maritime harassment. There were incidents in 2004 and 2007 of Iranian forces seizing small groups of Royal Navy personnel, who were safely released following negotiations. The seizure of the Stena Impero in 2019 brought tensions to a new pitch. The Swedish-owned, British-flagged oil tanker was intercepted by IRGC speedboats and a helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz and escorted to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, where it was held for over two months. HMS Montrose, a Type 23 frigate on duty, was close enough to hear the radio communications during the seizure but too far away to intervene in time, illustrating with uncomfortable precision the gap between presence and protection.

HMS Montrose’s deployment during this period became something of a symbol of both what the Royal Navy could do and what it was being asked to do with insufficient resources. The frigate spent the better part of three years on near-continuous deployment in the Gulf, with crew rotations flown out to relieve exhausted personnel rather than bringing the ship home. It was a testament to the professionalism and resilience of the Royal Navy’s people, and a frank acknowledgement that there were simply not enough ships to sustain a proper rotation. When HMS Montrose finally returned home, the commitment passed to other frigates on what amounted to emergency scheduling, with the Gulf queue competing directly against NATO commitments in the North Atlantic and High North. With the withdrawal of the last Royal Navy ship from Bahrain just a couple of months ago, Britain no longer has a permanent naval presence in the Gulf.

Reviews and Resources

The allied dimension of the current crisis matters enormously. The US Navy remains the anchor of any credible response, but Washington has made clear that it expects its European partners to carry more of the burden. This is not new for Britain, but it is becoming unsustainable. Across the Middle East’s maritime theatre—from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden to the Strait of Hormuz—there is a dangerous gap between the security guarantees Western nations implicitly underwrite and the actual military capacity they commit. A Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer can provide the layered air defense against missiles and drones that the current threat demands. A Type 23 frigate, with its sophisticated sonar suite, is formidable in the complex environment of the Gulf. Merlin helicopters provide the reach to prosecute both sub-surface and surface threats at range. Britain brings intelligence relationships and operational experience that few allies can match. But the Royal Navy currently has too few ships to sustain a meaningful Gulf commitment while honoring its obligations in the North Atlantic, the High North, and home waters simultaneously. The fleet stands at a historic low point—qualitatively capable, quantitatively stretched to breaking point.

The particular irony of this moment is that the problem has already been diagnosed—in public, in detail, and with the government’s own endorsement. Last year’s Strategic Defence Review (in which I had a small role) set out 62 specific recommendations to make the UK military more lethal, better integrated, and more operationally ready. Ministers accepted every one of them and pledged to act. Months later, the action has not materialized.

The mechanism for turning those recommendations into reality—the Defence Investment Plan, which is supposed to translate strategic ambition into funded, deliverable programs—was due last fall. It did not appear. Ministers gave assurances that it would arrive before Christmas. It did not. We are now well into 2026, and the country is still waiting. The reason for the delay is not procedural—it is financial. Reports have pointed to a gap of approximately £28 billion between what implementing the review’s recommendations would actually cost and what the Treasury has been willing to commit.

The result is a peculiar and deeply damaging situation: The government has accepted an ambitious and necessary vision for British defense, promised to deliver it at what it called a “wartime pace,” and then spent the better part of two years producing nothing of substance. There are no significant program commitments, no major modernization announcements, and no serious investment decisions. As the chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee has observed, the government appears to be “trundling along rather than realising the urgency of the moment.” The patience of the military, the defense industry, and the country’s allies is not infinite.
What Needs to Be Done

The path forward is not complicated, though it demands both funding and the political courage to spend it. The Defence Investment Plan must be published now, and it must be fully funded—another wish list without Treasury backing will not deter adversaries, will not reassure allies, and will not protect British interests at home and overseas. The Royal Navy must be treated as a priority: its surface fleet, its mine countermeasures capability, its submarine force, and its stewardship of the British continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent all require sustained investment. Emerging capabilities must be moved from promising experiments to fully funded programs, particularly those that will form the backbone of Atlantic Bastion. And the people who make all of this possible—the sailors, engineers, and other workers who represent the real foundation of military power—must be recruited in greater numbers, trained properly, and retained for the long haul.


None of this is cheap, and none of it can be done without a genuine decision by the government that defense is not a discretionary item but the first obligation of the state. The world we are navigating—with Russia to NATO’s east, a deteriorating Middle East, and an increasingly assertive China reshaping the Indo-Pacific—does not offer the luxury of a long run-up. The time for warm words with no follow-through has passed. Starmer and his government must demonstrate that they can do something harder than write an encouraging response to a defense review.

About the author: Dr. Emma Salisbury is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, and a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks.

Source: This article was published by FPRI


Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Founded in 1955, FPRI (http://www.fpri.org/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests and seeks to add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.