Washington has invited Wellington to contribute to a coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, drawing New Zealand into Middle East tensions and testing the coalition government's relationship with both the United States and its Five Eyes partners, RNZ reports.
The request puts New Zealand in an uncomfortable position: say yes and send ships to the Persian Gulf for a potentially dangerous mission, or decline and risk damaging the relationship with Washington that the government has been trying to rebuild.
This is the post-AUKUS reality for small Pacific nations. The US is calling in favours, and New Zealand - which maintained nuclear-free status while watching Australia deepen its military ties with Washington - now has to decide how much it wants to be part of America's global military operations.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most critical shipping chokepoints, with a third of seaborne oil passing through the narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Any disruption there reverberates globally, which is exactly why tensions in the region matter to countries far from the Middle East.
The coalition government has made rebuilding the US relationship a priority after years of Labour's more "independent" foreign policy stance. But that independence came with benefits - New Zealand maintained relationships across the Pacific and avoided being seen as an automatic ally.
