The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said there was a risk of ‘miscalculation’ in the Strait of Hormuz, while Donald Trump said an Iranian cargo ship had been seized
British military officials said the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf is in a “critical” state, as US Marines intercepted and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre said there was a “high level of activity by naval forces in the region”. There is a “risk of attack or miscalculation” in the waterway, the authority said, also citing multiple attacks on Saturday by Iranian forces on vessels passing through the strait.
It also said that there was a ‘critical’ risk, the highest level on the Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC) threat scale used for assessing risks to commercial shipping, in the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea. The seizure of the cargo ship, meanwhile, potentially risks further talks between the US and Iran amid a rapidly approaching end to the ceasefire between the two.
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Tensions over strait
Iran had announced the Strait of Hormuz’s reopening after a 10-day truce between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon took hold on Friday.
But after Trump said that the US blockade of Iran’s ports “will remain in full force” until Tehran reaches a deal with the US, Iran said it would continue enforcing its restrictions in the strait.
After a brief uptick in transit attempts on Saturday, vessels in the Persian Gulf held their positions, wary after two India-flagged ships were fired on mid-transit and forced to turn around.
Their retreat returned the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes, to its pre-ceasefire status quo, threatening to deepen the global energy crisis and push the parties toward renewed conflict as the war entered its eighth week.
With days until the ceasefire in place between the US and Iran runs out, Iran on Saturday said it had received new proposals from the US, and Pakistani mediators were working to arrange another round of direct negotiations in the coming days.
Though the ceasefire has held, the standoff in the strait threatens to plunge the region back into a war that has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states.
Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 US service members throughout the region have also been killed.
Cargo ship seized
US President Donald Trump said the US forcibly seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to get around a naval blockade near the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials, meanwhile, said earlier on Sunday that they remained open to negotiation but held firm that ships would not pass the strait while the US blockade remained in effect.
The US has implemented a blockade on ships heading to and from Iranian ports.
In a social media post, Trump said the ship was warned by a US Navy guided missile destroyer in the Gulf of Oman to stop but it did not.
“Our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room,” Mr Trump wrote.
He said US Marines had custody of the cargo ship, named Touska, and were “seeing what’s on board”.
Hopes for further talks
The seizure escalates a back-and-forth with Iran over traffic in the strait and comes as the US is preparing for a second round of in-person talks with Iran as a fragile ceasefire runs out in days.
Trump said that US negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday for talks, lifting hopes of extending a ceasefire set to expire this week even as Washington and Tehran remain locked in a stand-off over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran had not confirmed it would attend.
Trump accused Iran of violating the ceasefire by firing at ships passing the strait and threatened to destroy civilian infrastructure in Iran, if it does not take the deal that the US is offering.
“If they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump wrote.
Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf said before Trump’s latest comments that Iran was still seeking peace despite the blockade.
“There will be no retreat in the field of diplomacy,” he said, acknowledging that the gap between the two sides remained wide.
Mediators work to ‘bridge’ key differences
It remains unclear whether either side had shifted their stances on unresolved issues that derailed the last round of negotiations, including Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, its regional proxies and control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Ahead of talks in Pakistan, a regional official involved in the mediation efforts said that mediators were finalising the preparations and that US advance security teams were already on the ground.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the preparations with the media.
For the Islamic Republic, the strait’s closure — imposed after the US and Israel launched the Iran war on February 28 during talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme — is perhaps its most powerful weapon, threatening the world economy and inflicting political pain on Trump.
For the US, the blockade squeezes Iran’s already weakened economy and pressures its government by denying it long-term cash flow.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council issued a statement calling the blockade a violation of the ceasefire and said Iran would prevent “any conditional and limited reopening” of the strait. The council has recently acted as Iran’s de facto top decision-making body.
Since most supplies to US military bases in the Gulf region come through the strait, “Iran is determined to maintain oversight and control over traffic through the strait until the war fully ends”, the council said.
That means Iran-designated routes, payment of fees and issuance of transit certificates. Iranian deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh has said Iran will not hand over its stock of 440 kilograms of enriched uranium to the US, calling the idea “a nonstarter”.
Mr Khatibzadeh did not address other proposals for the enriched uranium, saying only that “we are ready to address any concerns”.
