Takaichi’s Obscure Response to War in Iran

What is the significant situation with the U.S. war in Iran

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
March 9, 2026

Japan received the news of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran with some surprise even though, back in mid-January, the Foreign Ministry had advised Japanese citizens in Iran to evacuate immediately. Despite the Japanese government’s position that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated international law, the Sanae Takaichi administration has declined to assess the legality of the bombing in Iran. Takaichi has taken a limited public role: she watches, waits, and does what is necessary to evacuate Japanese citizens in the region. Meanwhile, markets in Japan have been volatile considering fundamental concerns about the availability of oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) from the Middle East.

Takaichi was in Tokyo when she received the first report of the U.S. attack. It was February 28 and she was scheduled to leave for Kanazawa, Ishikawa, to give a campaign speech supporting Governor Hiroshi Hase in an election on March 8. Although the war’s outbreak gave Takaichi a full agenda of things to do, she made no change to her schedule.

Asked about that decision in discussions at the Committee on Budget in House of Representatives, Takaichi insisted that her decision was not inappropriate, because she was kept informed on developments in Iran and could make a decision regardless of her geographic location. Although she did not say so, her support of Hase was probably a high personal priority: like Takaichi, Hase was a longtime member of Shinzo Abe’s faction and served in the Diet from 1995 to 2022. In any case, despite Takaichi’s support, Hase was not reelected.

The response of the Takaichi administration to the war in Iran has been slow in coming and has not yet fully emerged. After a security conference with the ministers on the evening of February 28, the Chief Cabinet Secretary (CCS), Minoru Kihara, stressed the government’s effort to collect information and to protect Japanese citizens in the region. Asked about a legal basis for the attack by the U.S., Kihara did not answer directly and instead rebuked Iran for its development of nuclear weapons.

By contrast, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, then prime minister Fumio Kishida accused Russia of a breach of the United Nations Charter that directs all members to refrain from “threat or use of force against the territory integrity of political independence of any state.” Takaichi has refrained from making a similar interpretation of international law even after the leadership in Iran announced the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in a military strike.

In the debate in the Lower House Budget Committee on March 2, the chairwoman of the Japan Communist Party, Tomoko Tamura, asked Takaichi to persuade the U.S. and Israel to stop their attack. Takaichi said that she did not have sufficient information about the war. “Our government refrains from making legal judgments,” Takaichi said, adding that she did not know whether the U.S. and Israel strikes were in self-defense and that Japan had been supporting nuclear talks by the U.S., Iran, and other interested countries.

Rather than focusing on the war, Takaichi is taking this time to implement her conservative agenda. Given the unstable international security environment, her administration is removing restrictions on exporting military weapons. On March 6, the LDP and Japan Innovation Party publicly recommended revisions to the “three principles for transfer of defense equipment” to unleash Japan’s exports of lethal weapons.

In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Tokyo on March 6, Takaichi emphasized the importance of Canada in promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” They agreed to continue to cooperate to enhance the supply chain for crucial minerals to protect against Chinese restraints. In a telephone conversation with German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on March 5, Takaichi also shared concerns about supply chains with him. Takaichi is more concerned about the Indo-Pacific and China than about the Middle East and Iran although Japan relies heavily on oil production there.

Over a month before the attacks in Iran, on January 16, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs raised the level of warning for travelers in Iran to Level 4, the highest level, which is a recommendation to evacuate immediately. Takaichi’s top priority at the beginning of the war was how to keep the 200 Japanese citizens in Iran safe. This challenge has broadened after strikes by Iran in other Middle Eastern countries where Japanese citizens also live, work, and travel. There have been no reports so far of Japanese victims of the war although two Japanese are in custody in Iran.

Japan’s greatest concern is not political but economic. Japan depends on the Middle East for over 95 percent of its crude oil. Japanese ships loaded with crude oil or LNG must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has warned that Iranian Revolutionary Guards will fire on any ship trying to pass through the strait. The strait is effectively closed since the military attack by the U.S. and Israel started. (Historians may recall the Nissho Maru incident in 1953 when a Japanese tanker was one of the few that breeched the British blockade of the Strait to eventually deliver oil to Japan.)

To avoid a panic, Takaichi has stressed that Japan has sufficient reserves of crude oil. “We have an oil reserve for 254 days,” she said in the discussion in the Lower House budget committee. Crude oil prices have since been extremely volatile. On March 9, the per-barrel price of crude oil opened at $98 and rose to nearly $120. Later in the day, President Trump said that the war, which he described as “a little excursion” was “very complete, pretty much.”

The price fell sharply, and later in the day in the U.S. crude oil was trading in the range of $85 to $90. The Japanese stock market closed on March 9 before Trump’s remarks. Given the then concerns about the negative impact of the continuing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Nikkei 225 index plunged significantly by about 3,000 points, or just over 5 percent.

The Takaichi administration abolished the temporary gasoline tax at the end of 2025. Since then, the retail price of gasoline in Japan has apparently declined. Oil price hikes caused by the war in Iran are likely to exceed the benefit of that tax cut. In the intensive debate on Iran at Lower House Budget Committee on March 9, Takaichi promised to take additional measures to support price of gasoline, electricity and gas supply without forming any supplemental budget.

Over ten years ago, in 2015, former prime minister Shinzo Abe said that the closing of the Strait of Hormuz might be a “survival threatening situation” in which Japan could exercise its right of collective self-defense and use force. Will Japan attack Iran if Iran blocks the strait? “We do not think that we have reached that situation,” said CCS Kihara, who described the war, at the moment, as not a “survival threatening situation [存立危機事態].”

In the March 9 discussion, Takaichi also declined to recognize the war in Iran as a “significant influence situation [重要影響事態]” in which Japan may have to give logistical support to its American ally. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi explained that Japan had not received any request from the U.S. for that logistical support. Although Japan has various concepts of a “situation,” it is not clear how it pictures current situation in Iran.