Iran plays video of Strait of Hormuz cargo ship seizure as Trump launches next move

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon that killed a journalist on Wednesday are “a war crime,” Lebanon’s prime minister said, as the journalists’ union said rescuers were prevented from entering a collapsed building that was left trapped under rubble.

Amal Khalil, a journalist for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, bled to death in the ruins of a building struck by an Israeli military strike after Israeli gunfire prevented ambulance crews from reaching him for “almost four hours,” according to the Union of Lebanese Journalists (ULJ).

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of “war crimes” in his post on X Wednesday, saying that “Israel’s targeting of media workers in the south while doing their professional work” “are no longer isolated incidents, but…

Photographer Zeinab Faraj was also injured in the attack, the union said.

The Israel Defense Forces denied that the army prevented the rescue team from reaching the scene of the incident and said it “is not targeting journalists and is trying to minimize harm to them while maintaining the safety and security of its soldiers.”

The U.S. military said on Thursday that troops boarded another “unmanned” tanker linked to US-sanctioned Iran, far from the hotly contested Strait of Hormuz – the latest in a series of tit-for-tat blockades of commercial shipping by the two nations.

“Suddenly, the US Navy intercepted and boarded the stateless vessel M/T Majestic X, which is transporting oil from Iran, in the Indian Ocean,” the Department of Defense said in a social media post that included a video of the operation.

“We will continue the use of international maritime law enforcement to disrupt illegal networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” the military added.

Iran has refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz despite the fact that the US-Iranian President continued to end the war this week, calling the US Naval blockade of its ports and Iranian-linked ships a violation of the agreement.

Tehran’s military also seized two commercial ships in the crisis as the situation between the countries escalated.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon said the US military intercepted an Iranian-linked crude oil tanker “offshore authorized M/T Tifani” in the Indo-Pacific Command’s area of ​​responsibility, including the vast Indian Ocean.

A Philippine government agency said Thursday that 15 Filipino sailors aboard two Iranian-backed ships were “safe and unharmed” and that “their families have been informed and are receiving government support.”

The statement was the first confirmation from a non-Iranian organization that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had seized two cargo ships yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Department of Labor said ten Filipinos were aboard the Epaminondas, while five were aboard the MSC Francesca, two ships the IRGC said it seized on Wednesday for violating its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has released a dramatically edited video of what it says are its soldiers boarding and seizing two commercial vessels seized in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday.

The UK military’s Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO) reported incidents involving three cargo ships in the disputed route, while the IRGC claimed to have seized two of them.

The Strait, a key global energy supply route, has been largely blocked for more than seven weeks due to Iran’s shipping threat, which was briefly halted but then reinstated after President Trump imposed a US military blockade on Iranian ports and ships. Both sides have been blocking ships in tit-for-tat brinkmanship ahead of the second round of direct peace talks in Pakistan.

In an IRGC video posted on Wednesday, masked fighters run towards the MSC-Francesca super cruiser in a gunboat and climb a ladder – guns strapped to their backs – to the top.

The video then shows another so-called “speed boat” carrying soldiers approaching the cargo ship Epaminodes, followed by clips of IRGC soldiers on board, opening a door and climbing a flight of stairs, guns raised, although it is not clear which ship they are on.

Earlier in the week, the US military’s Central Command released two videos of US forces seizing an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the region as part of its blockade.

Ambassadors from Israel and Lebanon are expected to meet in Washington on Thursday for a second round of peace talks, with their current ten-day ceasefire set to expire at the weekend.

Israel’s military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have accused each other of violating the accord almost since its inception. Lebanon’s national news agency reported on Wednesday that Israeli strikes killed two people, adding to the more than 2,000 killed by Israel since the beginning of March, according to health authorities.

Israeli officials say that Hezbollah has killed 23 people since the IDF’s attacks on the group intensified along with the Iran war.

The first US-brokered suspension began on April 16 at 1700ET.

The body of a Lebanese journalist who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Wednesday was pulled from the rubble hours after the attack.

The daily newspaper Al-Akhbar confirmed that its reporter, Amal Khalil, was killed in a strike south of the city of al-Tiri.

Information Minister Paul Morcos also confirmed Khalil’s death.

Khalil has been covering the Israel-Hezbollah war since it began in October 2023 and has been reporting from various parts of southern Lebanon on these conflicts.

Earlier on Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, called on the international community to immediately pressure the Israeli army to allow Khalil’s rescue.

Navy Secretary John Phelan is leaving his post immediately, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Wednesday.

The new acting head of the Navy will be Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, according to Parnell. Cao is a Navy veteran who ran for Senate in 2024 as the GOP nominee in Virginia, losing to Sen. Tim Kaine of the Democratic Alliance.

The Navy Department — which oversees the Navy and Marine Corps — is losing its top officer while the Navy plays a key role in the war with Iran.

The truce between the US and Iran has been in place for about two weeks, but the US has continued to impose a ban on shipping in Iranian ports at the behest of President Trump. The president and other administration officials also suggested that the Navy can provide escorts to the oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz at a certain time.

Phelan is the latest high-ranking official to leave the federal government in recent months.

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The US Central Command said on Wednesday night that the US military had ordered 31 ships to turn around or return to port as part of the blockade against Iran. That’s two of the earlier figures sent by CENTCOM earlier in the day.