WASHINGTON/DUBAI, April 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. military began a blockade of ships leaving Iran’s ports on Monday, President Donald Trump said, and Tehran threatened to retaliate against ports of its Gulf neighbours after weekend talks on ending the war broke down.
Oil prices climbed back over $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.
Trump said that Iran had been in touch on Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he will not sanction any agreement that allows Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”
Since the war started on February 28, Iran has 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.
Trump said earlier that 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.
Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defence, warned that efforts by foreign military to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.
NATO allies including Britain and France said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, stressing instead the need to reopen the waterway, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.
CEASEFIRE UNDER STRAIN
The ceasefire that halted six weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes looked in jeopardy, with only a week left to run. Washington said Tehran rejected its demands at weekend talks in Islamabad, the highest-level discussions since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The U.S. military’s regional Central Command said the blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and the 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 seen by Reuters on Monday.
Two Iranian-linked tankers, the Aurora and New Future, laden with oil products, left the strait on Monday before the deadline, according to LSEG data.
An Iranian military spokesperson called any U.S. 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.
Trump said that Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated” during the war, adding that only a small number of “fast-attack ships” remained.
“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 wrote on social media, referring to the U.S. strikes carried out against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
LEBANON FACES ATTACKS
Trump has also lashed out at U.S.-born Pope Leo, denouncing him as “terrible” in a rare direct attack on the pontiff, who has spoken out against the war.
With the war unpopular at home and rising energy prices causing political blowback, Trump paused the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign last week after threatening to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” unless it reopened the strait.
Israel has continued to bombard Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack to seize a key south Lebanon town from the group. Israel and the U.S. have said the campaign against Hezbollah was not part of the ceasefire, while Iran has insisted it is.
Iran has brought new demands, including recognition of its control of the waterway, lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of forces from U.S. military bases across the Middle East.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said efforts were still on to resolve the conflict after the direct talks between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad at the weekend.
Trump has declared victory, despite failing to achieve the objectives he set out at the start of the war: to eliminate Iran’s ability to strike its neighbours, end its nuclear programme and make it easier for Iranians to topple their government.
Benchmark oil prices, which had eased last week after the ceasefire was announced, traded around 6% higher on Monday, off the day’s peaks but still above $100 a barrel.
Traders say the main benchmarks – used to set prices for trillions of dollars’ worth of commodities worldwide – actually understate the severity of a disruption with no precedent in modern times.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff and Keith Weir; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Ros Russell)
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