The latest exchange was sparked by an Iranian attack on a container ship on Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has asserted control over the critical waterway for international oil and gas since the United States and Israel started the war on Feb. 28.
Iran says it has the right to manage traffic through the strait and potentially charge fees in accordance with an interim peace deal reached last month. The U.S. and others dispute that, citing international law on freedom of navigation, and the American military has tried to establish an alternative route outside of Iranian control.
Calling into Fox News on Monday, U.S. President Trump said, “we’re taking over the Strait.” Trump also said that “everything was agreed to” in an 11-hour meeting Sunday, but that Iranian negotiators had called back later and suggested changes. He did not elaborate.
Iran and the U.S. are nearly halfway through the 60-day period in which they were supposed to negotiate a permanent end to the war and an agreement on Iran’s disputed nuclear program. Instead, a series of attacks over the strait have raised fears of a return to all-out war and further disruption to the global economy.
Oil prices jumped nearly 5% on Monday before falling back. U.S. benchmark crude, which had risen to nearly $120 a barrel at the height of the war, was trading at around $72.92. Markets were mixed.
US says it has struck dozens of targets in Iran
The U.S. military said it struck dozens of sites in the strikes Monday, including air defense systems, radar sites, missile and drone equipment, and small boats. It said Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for the strait to be open, as it was before the war. “Freedom of navigation has to be respected,” she said.
Mohammed Mokhber, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, wrote that Tehran would fight for the strait.
“We defend it so that in the future, for the passage of our ships, we are not forced to pay tribute to the enemy!” he wrote on X. “Retreating from this vital matter has no place in the mind of any friend of Iran.”
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a key power center in the country's theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal, said the Strait of Hormuz is “our territory, and we will not allow a rogue and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference in it.”
