Iran Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Reignite War Over Strait of Hormuz
The two countries slid back to open war over the waterway, as the U.S. planned to reinstate a blockade on Iranian ports on Tuesday. Iran said it had attacked two tankers and fired at U.S. military sites.
The United States and Iran reignited their war over the Strait of Hormuz, trading strikes as President Trump said he would resume a naval blockade Tuesday on Iranian ports and impose tolls on ships passing through the waterway.
The new attacks over control of the waterway, which is a crucial transit route for oil and gas shipments, could intensify a conflict that has already roiled the global economy and left many dead. Oil prices soared on Tuesday in one of the biggest daily jumps since the start of the war, as Mr. Trump’s preliminary cease-fire deal with Iran lay in tatters.
Iranian state media reported several explosions in southwestern Iran on Tuesday. The deputy governor of Bushehr province, Ehsan Jahanian, said four locations in the port city of Bushehr, home to Iran’s only civilian nuclear power plant, were attacked, according to the state news agency, IRNA. The U.S. military did not publicly comment on the claim.
The latest hostilities follow weeks of strikes between the United States and Iran, as diplomatic efforts to turn the truce into a permanent deal to end the war stalled. Mr. Trump has formally notified Congress that the fighting resumed and said last week that the cease-fire was “over.”
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the blockade of Iranian ports, which had been in effect from April to June, would begin late Tuesday local time. It said that its latest strikes on Iran, which concluded early Tuesday morning, were intended to degrade the Iranian military’s ability to target commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The number of vessels transiting the waterway has plummeted in recent days, and only 10 ships were reported to have passed through on Monday — the lowest level in more than a month.
Iran has said the cease-fire agreement gave it authority over shipping in the waterway. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said overnight that it had fired on two tankers after they attempted to transit through Omani waters rather than a route in Iranian-controlled territory.
The Iranian military also said it had launched strikes at U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Jordan. Officials from those countries have said the attacks were intercepted, without specifying whether they had caused any damage.
Mr. Trump said on Monday that the United States would charge a fee on each ship passing through the strait equal to 20 percent of the value of its cargo in return for providing security, just weeks after his administration said imposing tolls was unacceptable. He did not provide any details on how the United States would collect the fees, and some analysts were skeptical it would be implemented because of the huge costs it would impose on shipping and logistics.
Here’s what else to know:
War powers: Mr. Trump formally notified Congress that fighting with Iran had resumed, dismissing the importance of the cease-fire he long trumpeted. He did not outline a new strategy for resolving the conflict. Read more ›
Trump’s fee: His announcement that the United States would impose a 20 percent fee on shipping through the strait contradicted top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, who had insisted that there could be no fees or tolls for the use of an international waterway. Read more ›
Oil soars: The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose above $86 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in a month. The price has soared by about 12 percent in the past 24 hours, one of the steepest daily increases since the early stages of the war, and is 17 percent higher than before the war.
