Iran Tightens Its Control Over Strait of Hormuz

Iran moved to tighten control of the Strait of Hormuz by seizing two ships, escalating pressure in the strategic waterway just after US President Donald Trump said he was indefinitely shelving planned attacks and with peace efforts still stalled.

The fate of a ceasefire that began two weeks ago and was due to expire earlier this week was still uncertain.

Only hours after warning of renewed force, Mr Trump abruptly shifted course on Tuesday, appearing to declare unilaterally that the US would prolong the truce while it considered an Iranian proposal in talks aimed at ending the two-month-old war.

Iranian officials, however, gave no indication they had accepted any extension and instead rebuked Mr Trump’s decision to keep the US Navy blockade on Iran’s seaborne trade in place, a measure Tehran itself regards as an act of war.

With what he called such a “flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” Mr Qalibaf said on social media that reopening the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage that handled a fifth of global oil trade before the war — was out of the question.

“You did not achieve your goals through military aggression and you will not achieve them by bullying either,” he wrote in his first response to Mr Trump’s announcement.

“The only way is recognising the Iranian people’s rights.”

Mr Trump also retreated once more from repeated threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and other civilian infrastructure, targets the United Nations and others have warned would breach international humanitarian law. Still, there has been scant headway toward ending the war that erupted after joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February.

That has left both sides locked in limbo, with the vital Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed and the economic strain rippling worldwide.

Thousands have been killed across the Middle East, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group entered the conflict against Israel.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two vessels yesterday and escorted them to Iranian shores, according to statements from the shipping companies and Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The Guards said the ships — the Liberia-flagged Epaminondas and the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca — were operating without the required permits and had interfered with their navigation systems.

Maritime security sources said a third container ship, also flying the Liberian flag, came under fire in the same area but was not damaged and later continued its voyage.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavittt told Fox News that because the vessels were neither American nor Israeli, their seizure did not amount to a ceasefire violation.

She described the action as “piracy”.

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The US military said yesterday that it had already ordered more than 30 ships to turn back or return to port as part of the American blockade on Iran.

Well beyond the Gulf, sources said the US military had intercepted at least three Iranian-flagged tankers in Asian waters, diverting them from positions near India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Brent, the global benchmark for crude, stayed above $100 a barrel in Asian trading this morning after climbing into triple digits a day earlier for the first time in two weeks.

In Tuesday’s announcement, Mr Trump said the US had accepted a request from Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

Ms Leavitt told reporters he had set no deadline for either the proposal or the discussions.

Pakistan, which has been acting as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together after both failed to attend tentatively planned talks in Islamabad on Tuesday, just before the two-week-old ceasefire was set to lapse.

An initial round of peace talks between Iran and the US in Islamabad 11 days ago ended without agreement.

Mr Trump wants Iran to surrender its highly enriched uranium and halt further enrichment to ensure it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful civilian purposes and is demanding sanctions relief, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.

Iran has also made a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group a condition for truce negotiations.

Yesterday, Israeli air strikes on Lebanon killed at least five people, among them the Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil.

It was the deadliest day since a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was announced on 16 April.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported this morning that Iran had executed a man convicted of links to both an exiled opposition group and Israel’s intelligence service.