The US military began a blockade of Iran’s ports Monday, President Donald Trump said, and Tehran threatened to retaliate against its Gulf neighbours’ ports after weekend talks in Pakistan on ending the war broke down.
A US official said there was continued engagement with Iran, and forward motion on trying to get to an agreement, Reuters reported. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which led mediation efforts over the last weekend, also said attempts were being made to resolve the conflict.
Since the US and Israel began the war on 28 February, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee.
But oil prices climbed back to $100 per barrel, with no sign of a swift reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to ease the biggest ever disruption in supplies and broader concerns over the durability of a two-week ceasefire agreement reached last week.
West Asia war | Live updates
9.30 am: US-sanctioned tanker passes through Hormuz
A tanker sanctioned by the US travelled through the Strait of Hormuz Tuesday, shipping data on LSEG showed, testing the US naval blockade.
The tanker Rich Starry is Chinese-owned and has Chinese crew onboard, Reuters cited the data as showing.
Bloomberg had reported earlier in the day that the tanker was blacklisted by Washington in 2023 for helping Tehran evade energy sanctions. It was not clear on this occasion whether it visited Iranian ports before its transit or was carrying cargo.
9.25 am: Pakistan ‘offers to host 2nd round’ of US-Iran talks
Associated Press reported that Pakistan has proposed hosting a second round of negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad in the coming days, before the ceasefire ends.
The agency cited two Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
9.15 am: Trump takes down AI Jesus-like image
Trump, facing backlash amid his attacks on Pope Leo XIV, posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure Sunday, and deleted it Monday.
It was posted on Truth Social after Trump criticised the Pope, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”.
The US President later told reporters that he thought the image depicted him “as a doctor”.
9.00 am: Not interested in following Israel-Lebanon talks, says Hezbollah
Iran-backed Hezbollah said it will not abide by agreements from Lebanon-Israel talks, to be held in the US Tuesday, and firmly opposes the negotiations.
“As for the outcomes of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not interested in or concerned with them at all,” senior Hezbollah leader Wafiq Safa told news agency Associated Press.
Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon and on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack that it said was intended to seize a key south Lebanon town from Hezbollah.
Fighting waded into Lebanon after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on 2 March, days after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
At least 2,055 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon and thousands others injured, the government says. More than a million people have been displaced.
Lebanon’s government, which says it is committed to disarming Hezbollah, had called for direct talks early on in the war. Last week, Israel announced its approval of talks. It will be the first time in decades that Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, meet face-to-face in direct talks.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will take part in the talks that are expected to begin in Washington Tuesday.
8.50 am: ‘Iran agreed to suspend nuclear enrichment for 5 years’
The New York Times, quoting senior Iranian and US officials, said in a report that Tehran had proposed suspending uranium enrichment for up to five years, but the US rejected that offer, insisting on a 20-year halt.
NYT said the countries had traded proposals to suspend Iran’s nuclear programme, but consensus was far from reached.
8.30 am: How would the blockade work?
Trump has said Washington would block Iranian vessels and any ships that paid such tolls and that any Iranian “fast-attack” ships that went near the blockade would be eliminated.
“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal,” Trump said on social media. He was apparently referring to the US strikes carried out against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The strikes, which began in September, killed more than 160 people. The US military has not provided evidence that the vessels were ferrying drugs.
But the US Central Command said its blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of Oman. “The blockade will not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations,” Central Command said in a note to seafarers Monday.
Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, warned that foreign military efforts to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.
An Iranian military spokesperson called any US restrictions on international shipping “piracy,” warning that if Iranian ports were threatened, no port in the Gulf or Gulf of Oman would be secure. Any military vessels approaching the strait would violate the ceasefire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.
8.00 am: Overnight recap
Trump said Iran had been in touch Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he would not sanction any agreement allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon. “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world,” he told reporters at the White House.
The talks between the US and Iran in Pakistan, the first direct meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ended on Sunday without an agreement.
Despite that, Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the US delegation, told Fox News on Monday the US “made a lot of progress” by communicating to Tehran where the US. “could make some accommodation” and where it would remain inflexible. He said Trump was adamant that any enriched nuclear material must be removed from Iran and a mechanism must be established to verify that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
Tehran “moved in our direction, which is why I think we would say that we had some good signs, but they didn’t move far enough,” Vance said, without disclosing details.
Source: Reuters
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