The United States and Iran asserted on Monday that they control the Strait of Hormuz after a weekend of attacks that spread across the wider Middle East, threatening any talks to end the war.
The latest exchange stems from an Iranian attack on a container ship on Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has secured control of a key international oil and gas waterway since the United States and Israel began war on February 28.
Iran says it has the right to manage the traffic in this way and may impose fees in accordance with an interim peace deal reached last month. The US and others oppose that, citing international freedom of movement law, and the US military has tried to establish an alternative to Iranian control.
Speaking to Fox News on Monday, US President Donald Trump said, “we are taking the Strait.” Trump reiterated that “everything was agreed” at the 11th hour meeting on Sunday, but the Iranian negotiators went back and proposed changes. He did not elaborate.
Iran and the US are almost halfway through a 60-day period in which they were supposed to negotiate a permanent end to the war and an agreement on Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Instead, a series of attacks on the strait raised fears of a return to full-scale war and continued disruption to the world economy.
Oil prices fell nearly 5 percent on Monday before reversing. Benchmark US crude, which had risen to around US$120 a barrel as the war raged, was trading at around $72.92. Markets were mixed.
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The US says it has hit dozens of targets in Iran
The US military’s Central Command described its forces as hitting dozens of sites in Monday’s strikes, including air defense systems, radar sites, missile and drone systems and small boats.
The chief executive of the European Union, Kaja Kallas, asked for this road to be opened as it was before the war. “Freedom of navigation must be respected,” he said.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a key force in the country’s regime that controls its ballistic missiles, strongly rejected the US statement.
“The Strait of Hormuz is our territory, and we will not allow a corrupt and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference,” the guard said.
Arab countries allied with the US are reporting another wave of attacks
Missile warning bells sounded three times on Monday in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Kuwait said it had contained the fire. There was no immediate word on damage in either country.
In Jordan, the regime’s military said it shot down Iranian missiles in an incident that “resulted in no casualties or property damage. Jordan also hosts US military forces and aircraft.”
In Iran, authorities reported attacks in Hormozgan, Khuzestan and Markazi provinces that killed at least two people, according to state news agency IRNA. Semiofficial Iranian media also reported strikes in the eastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, on the coast of the Gulf of Oman.
The attack came hours after the US ended its strikes – and raised the possibility that Gulf Arab countries might retaliate against Iran. There was an unsolicited attack in Iran on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the base of the armed wing of the Iranian Kurdish opposition group based in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region was attacked by a drone on Monday. Rebaz Sharifi, the local commander, said the strikes were aimed at the estates, without giving details of the casualties or casualties.
No party immediately claimed responsibility. Iran supports a number of powerful militias in Iraq.
The fight is focused on the strait situation
Early on Sunday, the US military said it had hit about 140 targets, including missile and aircraft launch sites, ammunition dumps and telecommunications equipment – a much heavier set of attacks than two previous strikes last week.
“All hell broke loose on them last night,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Iran has retaliated by attacking nations in the region that host US forces, while insisting that it alone must control the tide and charge ships that sail through it.
Sunday’s attacks spread to Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and even Oman – which shares the crisis with Iran. Oman, which has long been a mediator between Tehran and the West, called the Iranian embassy to condemn the attack.
Iran has described the crisis as closed, while the US military and Trump say it remains open.
Iran is caught off guard as US forces support ships sailing in the southern route along the coast of Oman. That new route has angered Iran, which has launched frequent attacks on ships using it.
Traffic on the Oman route dropped over the weekend to “minimum levels, indicating that operators continue to prioritize perceived safety over direct shipping options,” said ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com.
The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran, Esmail Baghaei, blamed Washington for the turmoil in the Middle East.
“Considering the fourteen-point memorandum of understanding, the American people, in this short period of time, have, in a way, slaughtered various parts of it,” Baghaei told reporters on Monday.
Baghaei also said that Iran will not allow a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Iranian nuclear sites bombed in 2025 by the US, where Tehran is believed to be full of highly enriched uranium.
Mediators are still trying to reach an agreement
Trump suggested last week that the interim war deal was “over.” But negotiators, including Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt, continued efforts to reach a final deal to end the war.
A regional official involved in the settlement, who did not want to be named in order to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that efforts to end the conflict were continuing on Sunday. Pakistan said its foreign minister spoke by phone with an Iranian diplomat and called for a “decline” from both sides.
Iran’s new leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since the war began. On Saturday, he vowed revenge for the assassination of his father and former predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by the US and the Israeli strikes that sparked the war.
