Iran yesterday fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, intensifying its assault on shipping in the waterway crucial to global energy supplies and complicating already faltering efforts to bring the US and Iran together for talks to end the war.
The attacks were carried out by the paramilitary Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to Iranian media, which reported that the force seized two of the ships and was bringing them to Iran.
That amounted to an escalation by Iran’s leaders, who appear poised to drive a harder bargain with US negotiators after US President Donald Trump said the US would indefinitely extend the ceasefire with Iran that had been due to expire yesterday.
Photo: US Navy / NAVCENT Public Affairs / AFP
Despite the extension, Trump also seemed to dig in, saying the US would continue to blockade Iranian ports.
That set the stage for continued disruption to traffic in the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas pass in peacetime, even if the ceasefire largely holds.
Already the conflict has sent gas prices skyrocketing far beyond the region and raised the cost of food and a wide array of other products. The longer the strait remains closed, the more severe and widespread the effects would be — and the longer it would take the economy to bounce back.
Iran yesterday morning opened fire on a container ship, and a second was attacked a short time later, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center said.
Iranian state television later reported that the ships were both attacked by the Revolutionary Guard, and were in the force’s custody and being taken to Iran.
The semiofficial Nour News, Fars and Mehr news agencies later reported that the Guard attacked a third vessel, which it said had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, without elaborating.
There have been more than 30 attacks on ships in the Middle East since the war began Feb. 28 with US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
While the ceasefire means that the US and Israeli airstrikes have stopped in Iran — and Tehran’s missiles no longer target Israel and the wider Middle East — the attacks in the strait and earlier US interdictions of Iranian ships show the maritime threat remains.
Without any diplomatic agreement, the attacks would likely deter ships from even attempting to pass through the waterway, and further squeeze global energy supplies.
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