DUBAI — Iran opened fire on a container ship Wednesday (April 22) in the Strait of Hormuz, underscoring the danger to commercial vessels in a waterway crucial to global energy supplies as plans for ceasefire talks between Tehran and the US in Islamabad faltered.
The morning assault by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came after US President Donald Trump indefinitely extended the ceasefire with Iran due to expire within hours, giving Tehran time to come up with a “unified proposal” ahead of possible negotiations.
A second ship came under fire in the strait a short time later with no reported damage, according to the British military’s UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO).
The maritime monitoring centre did not immediately identify who fired on the second vessel, but suspicion immediately fell on Iran, whose leaders appear poised to drive a harder bargain with American negotiators this time after two other rounds of talks with the Trump administration ended in open warfare.
Hard-line supporters of Iran’s theocracy held rallies across the country late Tuesday that included the Revolutionary Guard moving missiles and launchers into public places for the first time since the ceasefire started in a sign of defiance to Israel and the US, which devoted much of their airstrike campaign to destroying the county’s ballistic missile arsenal.
While American and Israeli airstrikes have stopped in Iran — and Tehran’s missile attacks no longer target Israel and the wider Middle East — Wednesday’s attack in the strait and earlier American interdictions of Iranian ships suggest the threat remains at sea.
Without any diplomatic agreement, those attacks may continue and further squeeze global energy supplies.
Trump said the US would continue its blockade of Iranian ports, which Iran has called “unacceptable”, and has indicated was a reason it had not yet agreed to join talks in Islamabad.
The Revolutionary Guard vowed Wednesday to “deliver crushing blows beyond the enemy’s imagination to its remaining assets in the region”.
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Iran claims ship ignored warnings before attacked
Wednesday’s attacks in the Strait of Hormuz came after the US seized an Iranian container ship after shooting it this past weekend and boarded an oil tanker associated with Iran’s oil trade in the Indian Ocean.
The UKMTO, the monitoring agency that first reported the attacks, said the first ship was attacked at 7.55am IRST (12.15pm SGT) by a Revolutionary Guard gunboat that did not hail the ship before firing.
It added that nobody was hurt in the attack.
Iran’s Nour News, however, reported that the Guard only opened fire on the ship after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian armed forces.” Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency described the attack as Iran “lawfully enforcing its control over the Strait of Hormuz.
In peacetime, about 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas transits the strategic waterway, which leads from the Persian Gulf to the open oceans and was fully open until the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb 28 to start the war.
Since then Tehran has throttled shipping traffic through the strait, causing oil prices to skyrocket and impacting global economies.
In early trading on Wednesday, Brent crude oil, the international standard, was trading at close to US$98 ($125) a barrel, up more than 30 per cent since the day the war started.
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Pakistan forges ahead with diplomatic efforts
Pakistan has been working tirelessly to bring both sides together for a second round of talks.
So far, Iran has not committed but Pakistani officials there have expressed confidence that Tehran will send a delegation to resume negotiations.
The first round April 11 and 12 ended without an agreement.
Over the weekend, Iran said that it had received new proposals from Washington, but also suggested that a wide gap remains between the sides.
Issues that derailed the previous round of negotiations included Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, its regional proxies and the strait.
Following Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he hoped it would create “critical space for diplomacy and confidence-building between Iran and the US,” according to his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
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One killed in drone attack in Lebanon
In Lebanon, where between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah broke out two days after the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran to start the war, the state-run National News Agency said a morning Israeli drone strike on the village of Jabbour killed one and wounded two others.
Israel’s military denied that it had attacked the area.
Since a 10-day ceasefire went into effect there on Friday, there have been several Israeli strikes while Hezbollah claimed its first attack on Tuesday.
Since the war started, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, according to authorities.
More than 2,290 people has been killed in Lebanon, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen have died in Gulf Arab states.
Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 US service members throughout the region have been killed.
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Iran attacks ship in Strait of Hormuz, complicating diplomatic efforts to resume talks
