Caroline Hepker

US allies, meanwhile, are meeting to prepare a diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is starting to operate the Strait of Hormuz as a tollbooth.

A Bloomberg investigation reveals how Iran-friendly tankers are being given secret codes and charged about a dollar per barrel of oil transported for safe passage.

Reopening the strait has become a key priority for governments around the world, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushing for talks.

The British leader has been a frequent target of the White House for refusing to join the war.

Those talks that Starmer refers to are happening late today here in London and the US is not expected to be attending them.

The summit comes as the United Arab Emirates has called on the UN to authorise measures including the possible use of force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

In a letter dated Tuesday, the UAE said,

cites a UN provision allowing the Security Council to respond to threats to peace or acts of aggression through measures such as military action, economic blockades or the severing of diplomatic ties.

The proposal would not establish a new UN mission.

However, UN approval could provide diplomatic backing for Gulf states if they choose to undertake military operations or form a naval task force to reopen the strait and secure the waterway after the conflict.

Well, European leaders are also concerned that President Trump could withdraw from NATO and that that could erode the alliance at a critical moment in its history.

When asked by the Telegraph newspaper if President Trump would consider putting the U.S.

out of the treaty, Trump said, Oh, yes, I would say it's beyond reconsideration.

In the same interview, the president called the bloc a paper tiger and criticised European members' refusal to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz.

Now the NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, Pierre Vandier, says the alliance must weather the storm.

Vandier added that it's a moment when we need to have cool heads.

His comments came as the FT reported President Trump had threatened to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine in order to pressure European allies to join a coalition of the willing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

And in other news, a crew of NASA astronauts are going to be closer to the moon than any humans in 50 years.

Here is the moment that the Artemis 2 mission took off.

So that was the takeoff then of the rocket.