A week of escalating tit-for-tat attacks between Iran and the U.S., triggered by Iran’s stubborn refusal to permit the Strait of Hormuz to remain open to all maritime traffic, prompted President Donald Trump to announce in disgust last week that the 60-day ceasefire called for by the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement signed by both sides on June 17 was “over” [finished], as far as he was concerned.
When, over the weekend, Iran continued to attack cargo ships and tankers which used a new U.S.-endorsed route on the Oman side of the strait, and launched a missile and drone attack on five other countries in the region that host U.S. military personnel on their territory, Trump declared that trying to conduct serious and productive negotiations with the Iranians was hopeless.
He ordered the U.S. military to take control of the strait away from Iran and keep it open to all maritime traffic entering or exiting from the Persian Gulf, whether Iran liked it or not, and declared that the U.S. military would become known as “The Guardian of the Hormuz Strait.”
Trump reinstated the U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, which he had lifted as a gesture of goodwill when he signed the MOU deal. On Monday, he reimposed the U.S. naval blockade on all Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf that he had also canceled when he signed the MOU.
Trump Increasing The Pressure On Iran’s Leaders
Trump has also ordered the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCON) to expand and diversify its attacks on Iranian targets. Trump’s purpose is to increase the pressure on Iran’s leaders to start negotiating with the U.S. in good faith, with respect to protecting freedom of navigation in the strait, and meeting President Trump’s demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear weapons program and give up its 972 lb. stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium.
On Monday, the White House sent a letter to GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate, declaring that under his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief, President Trump has ordered the U.S. military to resume hostilities against Iran on July 7, restarting a 60-day clock during which the president has the power to fight a war against Iran without the need for congressional approval, under the 1973 War Powers Act.
Trump also said that the list of targets to be struck by the U.S. Central Command will include Pickaxe Mountain, a mysterious new and heavily fortified underground Iranian nuclear site that had not been previously struck by the U.S. or Israel.
Persian Gulf States Have Adopted A Unified Position Against Iran
Meanwhile, Israel Hayom reports that the Persian Gulf states, which had been trying to stay out of the fighting between the U.S. and Iran last week, came to the conclusion over the weekend that the MOU agreement is “effectively dead.” The report also said that the “Gulf states, which are furious over Iranian attacks on their territory,” have now adopted “a unified Gulf position against Iran. . . including full support for the resumption of strikes” on Iranian targets.
“The shift in policy was partly driven by Iranian missile and drone attacks on Gulf states, including Qatar and its natural gas facilities.” As a result, “Qatar, which had previously blocked a unified Gulf position against Iran, withdrew its opposition following the attacks on its territory. . . [and Qatar] has also stopped working to secure the release of frozen Iranian funds.”
In addition, Israel Hayom reported on Monday “that Gulf states joined attacks on Iran over the past 48 hours. Their involvement has not been extensive, but they are now active participants in offensive operations.” However. the report did not indicate whether the attacks on Iranian targets by the Gulf states were being coordinated with the attacks on Iran by U.S. Central Command.
Israel Hayom also reported that in response to the U.S. ultimatum demanding that Iran issue a public declaration accepting the principle of “fully unrestricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” or else that the strait “would be completely closed to ships and oil tankers traveling to and from Iran,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made it clear that “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would not relinquish control of the strait.” The report also said that Araghchi, who had helped Iran to negotiate some of the previous agreements with the U.S., “has now been sidelined, and IRGC commanders are officially running the show.”
Vague Mou Language Encouraged Iran To Seize The Strait
One of the things that encouraged Iran to believe that it could get away with seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz was the intentionally vaguely worded fifth point of the MOU, which said that Iran would “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian officials claim that the phrase gives Iran the right to control shipping traffic through the strategic strait, charge exorbitant tolls of up to $2 million per ship, and open fire on any ships which use a U.S.-endorsed alternative southern route through the Strait, which is entirely within Oman’s territorial waters.
Under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, no nation has the right to charge a toll on vessels sailing through vital international shipping lanes like the Strait of Hormuz. To get around that legal problem, Iran has claimed that the money it is demanding from ships traveling through the strait is merely a form of “insurance” against attack, or compensation for imaginary safety and environmental services that Iran provides to those ships while in transit through the northern passage of the strait, which is inside Iranian territorial waters.
The U.S. and other nations note that Iran has no legal right to demand that their ships only use the northern route through the strait, passing through Iran’s territorial waters, rather than the southern route passing through the waters just off Oman’s coast, which the U.S. military opened in May.
Trump’s Declaration Of War Against Iran Over The Strait
In comments on Truth Social on Monday, President Trump declared that, “The Hormuz Strait is open, and will remain open, with or without Iran.” He also announced that, “We are reinstating the Iranian blockade, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the strait.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial notes approvingly that, “after ducking the matter in wartime, and then trying to solve it via diplomacy only for Iran to renege, the President now declares U.S. guardianship [over the strait.] This was always required to ‘finish the job,’” the editorial declares.
The editorial also approves of Trump’s new course of action. After Iran failed Trump’s “test” of its goodwill by failing to live up to its responsibility to re-open the strait under the MOU ceasefire agreement, Trump has reimposed the briefly lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil sales and the naval blockade of its Persian Gulf ports. These measures will further tighten the economic squeeze on the Islamic regime by drying up its main revenue source, while continued attacks by U.S. Central Command will continue to degrade Iran’s military capabilities.
The editorial predicts that if Trump sticks to his new strategy, it will ultimately force the regime to return to the negotiating table to seek relief. If and when that happens, Trump has made it clear that he will not be tricked again into accepting Iran’s false promises at face value.
In earlier comments to Fox News Monday morning, Trump said that the U.S. has already invested a huge amount of money to protect international shipping in the strait. As a result, he argued that the U.S. government deserves “fair” compensation for its expenses incurred while providing safety and security for ships from other countries using the Strait, and suggested the U.S. will charge 20% of the value of the cargo those ships are carrying. Trump later replaced the reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals from various Gulf States.
Trump said that, “Yesterday [Sunday], they [Iran] had an 11-hour [negotiating] meeting. Everything’s 11 hours with these guys. . . [The Iranians] can’t settle in one sentence and one hour and one minute. It should be one minute. And everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say we had to make a couple of changes.”
But Trump refused. He said, “We’re not going to make changes. Always changes. They [the Iranians] are professional negotiators. That’s all they are. I don’t even call them good at it. They haven’t gotten anything from me. But if you look at [the past] 47 years they’ve been ‘tapping’ people along. Every [American] president got tapped along, didn’t do anything [to stop the Iranians], and they became more and more powerful.”
Trump Now Says Negotiating With Iran Is A Waste Of Time
Trump also said in his Monday Fox News interview that he had, so far, negotiated “10 separate deals with these people [the Iranians],” but that they had promptly violated each one of them. “They always break it [their word],” Trump said, which is why he said, “we’re just going to hit them very hard.”
Trump insisted that the U.S. military is keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and that commercial maritime “traffic is flowing,” while Hossein Mohebi, an Iranian IRGC spokesman, not only insisted that the Strait was closed and will remain under Iranian sovereignty and control, he also said that the U.S. had “seriously endangered the security of the world’s oil and gas supply and must be held accountable.”
Meanwhile, the so-called battle of the Hormuz Strait continued on Monday with a report on Iranian TV saying that, “This morning, two ships that were attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz illegally were targeted and stopped by warning shots fired by the navy of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).”
Another statement by the IRGC said that the Strait will remain closed until “the end of U.S. interference in this region.”
Iran Redefines The Meaning Of Chutzpah
In another example of the sheer chutzpah of Iran’s leadership, its foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, accused the U.S. of interfering with Iran’s efforts to negotiate a cooperative arrangement with Oman to take over the management of the Strait of Hormuz. This was just a day after Oman complained about coming under attack from Iranian drones and missiles for cooperating with the U.S. military.
It also appears that America’s three strongest NATO European allies, Germany, France and Britain, are no longer refusing to support U.S. attempts to bring Iran to heel. When the U.S. war against Iran started in February, the three countries refused to allow American warplanes on their way to the Middle East to participate in the bombing of Iran to use their airbases.
But this Monday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain all condemned Iran’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait and on other countries in the region. “We condemn Iran’s heinous attacks on merchant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and on countries in the region, including Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan,” they said in a joint statement.
This group of Europe’s most powerful countries, which is known as the E-3, also called for the restoration of the 60-day MOU ceasefire that Trump had declared to be “over” last week, and a resumption of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran despite Trump’s accusation that Iran’s attacks on ships in the Strait reveal that it has not been negotiating in good faith.
As the Iranian attacks on shipping using the southern passage continued last week, the initial three retaliatory attacks on Iran launched by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) under President Trump’s orders increased in number and intensity. According to a CENTCOM statement, out of the total of 310 U.S. air strikes, the third set of air strikes hit 140 Iranian targets including “missile and drone sites, naval capabilities, ammunition storage facilities, communication networks, and coastal surveillance locations.”
Hegseth Promises To Make Iran Pay For Its Poor Choice
After the third set of U.S. air strikes on Iran was announced over the weekend, President Trump’s War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, wrote online that, “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.”
Like the previous two, the third American attack was limited in scope to Iranian military and naval assets, which had targeted antiaircraft radars and interceptor missiles, drone storage depots, and the small, speedy gunboats deployed by Iran in or around the Strait. In those three attacks, the U.S. military refrained from attacking any other strategic or economic targets in the rest of Iran, apparently in an effort to avoid giving Iran an excuse to further escalate the fighting.
But that changed Sunday night, after Iran attacked more shipping in the Strait, when two separate sets of American air strikes hit targets across Iran. Their targets ranged from several cities in the province of Khuzestan at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, to the southwestern cities of Mahshahr and Ahvaz, as well as other targets in central Iran such as the city of Khondab more than 200 miles inland from the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, and at least five cities in Iran’s Bashehr province on its southern coast.
U.S. Central Command officials did not provide much detail about the nature of the Iranian targets it struck Sunday night, but it did say that they were carried out by a combination of American fighter jets, naval vessels, aerial drones and, for the first time, “sea drones.”
CENTCOM released aerial video footage of the attack using three of the unmanned, remote-controlled vessels maneuvering in the water to position themselves to blow up submarine pens and ship maintenance facilities at the major Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas.
CENTCOM identified the unmanned boats as 24-foot-long Corsairs, and said that it used the same type of vessel last month to rescue the two-person crew from a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship that went down in the water near the Strait of Hormuz.
Not surprisingly, the increased intensity of the U.S. and Iranian attacks and counterattacks reduced the number of cargo ships trying to cross through the Strait Sunday night with U.S. military escorts to only six.
New Attacks On Iran Generate A New Spike In Oil And Gas Prices
However, the spike in the global market price from the attacks has been smaller than expected. Before Iran began attacking tankers in the Strait last week, the price for U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI grade) was less than $70 a barrel, while the European market standard Brent crude oil was trading at about $75 a barrel. By Tuesday of this week, after several consecutive days of attacks and counterattacks, WTI was selling for around $80 a barrel, and Brent reached $86 a barrel. But that was still far less than the peak of $114 a barrel Brent hit at the height of the Iran-induced global oil shortage on May 1, three days before the American military started Project Freedom, escorting oil tankers, LNG carriers and cargo ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Last week’s attacks and counterattacks in the Gulf also ended the slow but steady decline in the cost of gas at the pump for American consumers. President Trump is still pressuring the big oil companies and local gasoline stations to continue lowering their prices at the pump to better reflect the more than 30% decline in the global crude oil market over the past two months, because more Persian Gulf oil has been getting through.
Meanwhile, starting last Thursday, in addition to attacking more cargo ships passing without Iran’s permission through the southern route in the Strait, Iran launched dozens of drone and ballistic missiles at several of its regional neighbors, including Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, one of the countries mediating the peace talks between the U.S. and Iran, and Oman. Oman is the country across the Strait from Iran with which, according to the MOU agreement, Iran was supposed to coordinate free access through it for all commercial shipping.
In a related development, soon after the U.S. Central Command said that its attacks were complete last Thursday, Iran reported another attack on a military facility located on the periphery of its Russian-operated civilian nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, leading to speculation that it might have been an unannounced retaliatory strike attack by one of its Persian Gulf neighbors, such as the UAE or Saudi Arabia, both of which reportedly did attack Iran in retaliation before the first ceasefire was declared by President Trump on April 7.
Saudi Arabia Disrupts Iranian Arms Delivery To The Houthis
On Monday, Saudi Arabian warplanes carried out an airstrike on the runway of a Houthi-controlled airport in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa in an effort to prevent an inbound Iranian plane, believed to be carrying weapons, from landing. The Iranians have been encouraging the Houthis to use the weapons it supplies to them to attack Israel or U.S. targets in the region, or to blockade shipping trying to use the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, as an alternative route for Persian Gulf oil.
Israel Is Not Involved In Fighting Iran, But It Stands Ready To Do So
It is not believed that Israel had anything to do with the strike on the reactor site in Bushehr. At Trump’s request, Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed not to attack Iran while negotiations were ongoing with the U.S. over the MOU, to which Israel was not a party.
Israeli leaders have not been shy about expressing their disappointment that the MOU dealt primarily with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which does not directly concern Israel. It provided only for the start of negotiations with Iran over ending its nuclear weapons program, which is a vital issue for all of Israel’s main political leaders, in addition to Netanyahu.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, reiterated that the IDF and the Israeli people stand ready to confront Iran militarily again, if needed. Katz said at a military ceremony that the IDF “is on alert and ready to renew the campaign, to reestablish aerial superiority, and to carry out more (Israeli) air strikes to remove Iran’s threats for a third time [over the past year].” He also said that, “If we will have to return [to attack Iran], we will do so with even greater force.”
Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, which has been managing the nuclear reactor complex for Iran, announced that it would not be sending any of its 600 employees back to Bushehr, where they had been building two new civilian power reactors before the war with the U.S. began, until they were sure that it would not be attacked again.
Last Friday, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Maritime Information Center advised ships still stuck in the Persian Gulf to use the southern transit route through the Strait of Hormuz despite the ongoing attacks by the IRGC. The maritime center’s advisory said, “Notwithstanding recent unprovoked attacks on merchant vessels, mariners are reminded that the southern route of the (Strait) has been expanded and remains available for all traffic.”
Iran Attacking Its Persian Gulf Neighbors Again
Iran claimed that its attacks on its neighbors were aimed at bases in those countries from which the U.S. military has been operating against Iran. According to reports by those governments and the U.S. Central Command, the actual amount of damage done by the most recent Iranian strikes has been very limited. Most of the missiles and drones have been intercepted and shot down, with U.S. help.
According to U.S. government officials, the only damage to U.S. military assets in the region was from an Iranian drone strike on an empty warehouse at the naval base in Bahrain, which serves as the home port for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Kuwait also reported that an Iranian drone strike on one of its offshore drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf had caused some damage and injured one of the platform’s workers. Kuwait’s army said that its air defenses were still intercepting hostile incoming targets in its airspace on Monday morning, while Jordan’s military said that it also intercepted four Iranian missiles on Monday.
Qatar said that falling shrapnel from the ballistic missiles, used in what Iran said was an attack on the Al Udeid airbase used by American warplanes, left three people injured, including a child.
In Kuwait, Iran said the targets of its explosive drones were an American Patriot air defense system and a radar site.
In Bahrain, Iran said it had targeted a U.S. communications system and radar site, but Bahrain’s defense forces told Reuters that the Iranian missiles and drones were actually targeting civilian population centers.
Iran said the attack on Oman targeted the logistical support centers and refueling platforms used by the U.S. aircraft carriers patrolling waters in the region. Oman’s state news agency reported Iranian drone attacks on its Musandam region but made no mention of any casualties or damage that the drones caused. However, Oman did issue a formal protest to the Iranian ambassador, and its press agency issued a statement saying that, “The Sultanate of Oman affirms its condemnation and denunciation of this attack.” The Iranian attack, and Oman’s angry response to it, took place just a few hours after Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi hosted a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in an effort to jointly address the security issues in the Strait of Hormuz.
In addition, Oman’s state-controlled news agency said in a post on social media that, “Oman expresses its profound dismay at these irresponsible acts [by Iran], and underscores the imperative of adhering to the provisions of state sovereignty, good neighborliness, and non-interference [by Iran] in [Oman’s] internal affairs.”
In Jordan, the IRGC said it used several ballistic missiles to target an American command and control center at the Prince Hassan airbase, as well as hangars housing American MQ-9 attack and surveillance drones.
Another regional target that Iran publicly threatened Friday, but which it had failed to attack by Monday, was Israel. The threat came in a statement on Iranian TV by the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who said that, “any [American] attack on [Iran’s] infrastructure will be retaliated against, and the criminal Zionist regime [Israel] responsible for these atrocities will not be spared from the response of our fighters.”
Why Iran’s Leaders Are Afraid To Attack Israel
However. as this newspaper went to press, that threat had not yet been carried out, possibly due to recognition by Iran’s leaders that the IDF, under orders from Prime Minister Netanyahu, was well-prepared and would welcome the opportunity to resume its systematic bombardment of Iran during the first six weeks of the war, if given the opportunity by an Iranian first strike, and without needing to wait for President Trump’s approval.
Before the U.S. Central Command began launching retaliatory strikes on Iran last week, the New York Post cited an Israeli source in Yerushalayim saying that Israel was ready and “willing to do it [attack Iran] again” in cooperation with the U.S. military if given the opportunity. The source conceded that while Israel was “not eager to go back to the day when [its] people have to go to [the bomb] shelters [again],” it will not ignore Iran’s still aggressive behavior.
“So if that will be the price we’ll have to pay, we [the people of Israel] will bear with that situation,” the source said.
U.S. Has Helped To Free 800 Ships Trapped In The Persian Gulf
The multiple attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on shipping passing through the southern passage of the Strait over the past ten days have drastically reduced the number of ships trying to leave the Persian Gulf after having been stranded there since the start of the U.S.-Iran war on February 28. Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told reporters that since it opened the new transit route through Oman’s side of the Strait in early May, it has enabled more than 800 commercial ships, including tankers carrying 400 million barrels of Persian Gulf crude oil, to reach the rest of the world. That has substantially reduced the Iran-induced global oil shortage, bringing down the market price for crude oil sharply, and more slowly reducing the cost of gas at the pump for American consumers.
Of that total, the U.S. Navy claimed to have escorted 125 safely through the Oman side of the Strait at night. The ships would turn off their radio identification signals, making it more difficult for Iran to track them, while U.S. destroyers and American warplanes flying overhead would stay in constant radio contact with each ship’s bridge officers and shipowner’s operation centers, to monitor their progress and steer them safely through the passage. Nearly 400 ships that had been stuck for months in the Persian Gulf made it safely through the Strait during the seven-day period which started on June 20, but three days after Iran started attacking ships traveling through Oman’s side of the Strait the number dropped to 22, leaving another 600 ships still stranded in the Gulf.
U.S. Warships Still In Position To Blockade Iran
However, more than a dozen U.S. Navy warships, including two aircraft carriers, and scores of carrier- and land-based American warplanes and surveillance aircraft are still operating daily against Iranian targets in the general area of the Strait. At the same time, the U.S. military is also using automated sea drones to find and disable Iranian mines. As a result, Central Command spokesman Hawkins declared, “U.S. forces have held Iran accountable for its unwarranted aggression toward commercial shipping while still facilitating passage through the strait.”
However, the Central Command spokesman warned, there is “no guarantee” that American military guidance will be able to protect all commercial ships transiting the Strait from the threat of more Iranian attacks.
After signing the MOU with Iran on June 17, marking the start of a 60-day ceasefire, President Trump had expected Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, followed quickly by the start of talks about ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But when those “technical” nuclear talks never got started, and instead, Iran began warning and then attacking ships going through the Strait, Trump quickly lost his patience with Iran’s bait-and-switch and stalling negotiating tactics.
He ordered the initial U.S. retaliatory strike while attending a NATO conference in Ankara, Turkey, last week, and said, while announcing the military action, that with regard to the MOU ceasefire agreement, “To me, I think it’s over.
“I don’t want to deal with them [the Iranians],” Trump said. “They’re liars, they’re cheats, they’re sick people. They are a bunch of scum,” Trump said of the same Iranian leaders whom he had said two weeks ago were far more reasonable than the previous Iranian leaders he had dealt with before they were killed at the start of the current war.
“I don’t like them at all. We wasted a lot of time with them; they are incompetent,” Trump continued.
Trump Knows That His Name Tops Iran’s Hit List
The president also seemed to confirm media reports that Israel had recently uncovered a new plot by Iran to assassinate him. “They want to eliminate me — the president of the United States. I have been No. 1 on their [hit] list for years,” Trump said.
He then concluded with a dark statement about his intentions against Iran going forward, saying, “We need to eliminate the cancer early — that is how I feel.”
Trump also warned in a Truth Social post over the weekend that if the Iranian government did succeed in assassinating him, he had left instructions for thousands of American missiles to be “locked and loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian government act on its threat.” He then added in the same post that, in such a situation, the U.S. military would, “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran.”
During that same time frame, a written statement was issued in the name of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, on Saturday, which threatened vengeance on those responsible for the death of his predecessor and father, who was killed in the war’s initial attacks.
Late Saturday, the online edition of Hamshahri, a conservative newspaper published in Tehran that is known for its provocative stories, published a list of 13 foreign leaders and their photos to be targeted, alongside Mojtaba’s statement vowing revenge. The list included President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
During his comments at the NATO conference in Ankara, Trump explained why the timing of Iran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait last week had particularly angered him. He said he had decided to give Iran “a week off” from negotiations with the U.S. out of consideration for the state funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But rather than respecting the ceasefire last week, Trump said, “Instead, they [the IRGC] started shooting rockets at ships,” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Back in the United States, Vice President Vance, who was the administration’s point man in the negotiations with the Iranians that led to the MOU agreement, tried to explain to reporters, “The [original MOU] deal is very simple. If they [Iran] shoot at ships, we’re going to knock …them.”
When Trump Realized That Negotiating With Iran Is Pointless
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump had soured on the MOU negotiations that Monday night, just before he left for the NATO conference in Turkey, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio and War Secretary Pete Hegseth told him in the Oval Office that Iran had fired anti-ship missiles and one-way attack drones in separate attacks on three ships using the U.S.- authorized southern route through the Strait along the coast of Oman.
When Trump then pressed Rubio and Hegseth, who, unlike Vance, had opposed signing the MOU agreement, as well as other senior White House aides, about whether they believed that Iran was serious about negotiating a final peace deal with the U.S., they concluded that the answer was no.
On the previous day, Sunday, July 5, cargo ships and tankers using the U.S.-protected southern route through the Strait started to receive radio warnings from the IRGC saying, “This route is not safe, you are [in] danger. Our missiles and drones are ready to fire at you.”
Shortly thereafter, the IRGC launched attacks at three of those ships, including a Qatari tanker whose engine room caught fire, forcing the evacuation of its crew.
Other shipowners quickly got the message. On Tuesday, after receiving radio warnings from the IRGC that they were about to be attacked, four European-owned supertankers trying to sail through the old central route through the Strait turned back.
At that point, Trump decided to re-impose the sanctions on Iran’s oil sales that he had lifted with the signing of the MOU just two weeks earlier. He also ordered Central Command to launch a series of escalating air strikes, if Iran didn’t stop attacking ships in the Strait. After eliminating the Iranian military targets around the Strait, the air strikes would start targeting Iran’s critical infrastructure facilities, including its water desalination plants. These plants generate the drinking water needed to sustain Iran’s civilian population in the face of a severe water shortage due largely to government mismanagement.
Trump Will Still Negotiate With Iran, But His Expectations Are Low
Nevertheless, Trump said in Ankara that, at the request of other countries in the Persian Gulf region, the U.S. was willing to continue its negotiations with Iran, even though he no longer had much faith that they would result in a credible deal to re-open the Strait of Hormuz or put an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
While Trump did not order the U.S. Naval to reimpose the blockade on Iran’s Persian Gulf shipping that he lifted when the MOU agreement was signed on June 17, American officials said that the necessary U.S. warships for a blockade had remained in position, which enabled Trump to announce this past Monday morning that he was ordering the U.S. military blockade on Iranian shipping in the Persian Gulf to be put back in place at 4 p.m. the next day.
In a Truth Social post put up shortly after his Fox News interview Monday, Trump wrote, “The Hormuz Strait is open and will remain open, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the Iranian blockade, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait.”
After three days of consecutive tit-for-tat strikes by both sides, senior U.S. officials told reporters last Friday that they also now think that an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran coming out of the proposed MOU negotiations is also unlikely. In addition, the U.S. officials warned of more serious consequences for Iran if it does not stop attacking ships using the southern passage through the Strait. That threat was carried out by CENTCOM through its stepped-up attacks on Iran over the weekend, which were repeated on Monday.
The White House also demanded that Iran issue a formal statement declaring the strait to be open to all commercial shipping. But instead, the IRGC announced that the Strait would from now on be closed to any ships which do not follow its orders.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social media account, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the ceasefire is over!”
In coordination with the U.S., Qatari negotiators traveled to Iran on Friday to meet with Iranian officials in an effort to de-escalate the situation and enable negotiations to resume, out of a belief, according to one unnamed diplomat, that “it’s clear both sides want to come back to the MOU.”
To justify continuing the negotiations, some U.S. officials claimed that hardline IRGC commanders had carried out all of the attacks on shipping in the Strait on their own, in defiance of the Iranian government officials who were negotiating with the United States in good faith.
Similarly, Mehran Haghirian, the executive director of research at the London-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, which focuses on economic development and diplomacy in Western and Central Asia (including Iran), said, “Decision-making in Iran is now in chaos. There is clearly a faction that doesn’t support negotiations. Many of them want to prolong this [stalemate] as much as possible, because every day that is passing is strengthening the regime and limiting the room for any postwar political reform [in Iran].”
Iran Is Trying To Play A Game Of “Good Cop, Bad Cop” Against Trump
However, other longtime observers of Iran reject that convenient explanation that would absolve Iran’s leaders of violating their agreement in the MOU to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. These analysts accuse Iran’s leaders of playing a cynical game of “good cop, bad cop,” in an effort to give Trump a credible excuse to avoid the necessity of resuming full-scale U.S. military attacks against Iran, which would be politically awkward for him and Republican candidates running in November’s midterm elections. However, when it suits their purpose, Iranian government officials insist that their country is unified behind the new hardline government, under the new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khameini. This is despite the fact that, more than four months after assuming his father’s post, he has yet to make his first live or recorded public appearance, while hardline Iranian officials keep speaking in his name.
After a day of relative quiet in the Strait, Iran used drones and missiles to launch yet another attack on a Cyprus-flagged container ship called the M/V GFS Galaxy, damaging its engine room and starting a fire. The crew of the ship was evacuated, with the exception of one crew member who was listed as missing. Significantly, the attack on the ship from Cypress was the first one for which the IRGC publicly claimed responsibility since Iran’s military harassment of shipping in the Strait resumed last week.
The U.S. Central Command also reported Sunday that it had shot down additional Iranian drones and missiles that had been fired at other ships as they tried to pass through the Strait’s U.S.-defended southern passage.
According to an analysis by Neil MacFarquhar, a veteran international reporter for the New York Times, Iran’s hardline leaders decided to attack the ships taking the U.S. recommended southern route through the Strait because they feared that their control over the passageway was being threatened, while the survival of its strongest terrorist ally, Hezbollah, was being threatened militarily by the IDF’s presence in southern Lebanon and the Beaufort Castle region.
Iran is also concerned about the ongoing negotiations in Washington, D.C., in which Israeli and Lebanese government officials have been negotiating a peace deal, under the auspices of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The talks have been developing a method through which Hezbollah fighters can be gradually disarmed and ultimately replaced by the regular Lebanese army, which, unlike Hezbollah, is not answerable to Iran and poses no threat to Israel.
Finally, Iran began to fear that Trump would not begin to deliver on his promises to lift economic sanctions on its economy and unfreeze its financial assets until after he forces it to give up control over the Strait of Hormuz and permanently end its nuclear weapons program.
Iran’s Leaders Are Now Determined To Keep Control Of The Strait
Furthermore, Iran’s leaders have made it clear that they are now determined to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz, and with it, the regional and global crude oil market, no matter how high the cost. “The strategic passage is more important to us than dozens of atomic bombs,” said Mohsen Rezaei, an adviser to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not made an appearance on video, let alone in person, since he was severely injured in the initial Israeli air strike of the war that killed his father in February.
MacFarquhar writes that according to some analysts, “The perception by Iran that it had bested the United States and Israel in the war earlier this year likely helped lead to the renewed confrontation.”
His New York Times article also quotes Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., saying, “Having withstood this pummeling from the U.S. and Israel, they [Iranian leaders] are probably feeling quite secure… I think the timing of the attacks [in the Strait], coinciding with these [Iranian] funeral ceremonies, demonstrates a bit of triumphalism on the part of the regime that they finally, essentially extricated themselves from the war. They’re able to bury their dead, and they’re still firing back. There’s a message in that for sure.”
A Brief History Of The Strait Of Hormuz
While the strategic placement of the Strait of Hormuz has long been recognized, for almost the past 60 years, commercial ships sailed through it along a route established by the United Nations in 1968, with the support of the previous pro-U.S. Iranian government under the Shah of Iran, which did not try to assert control over the main passage, even though parts of it passed through Iranian territorial waters.
When the Shah’s government was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the new regime said that it was not bound by that U.N. agreement, but over the next 47 years, it only occasionally challenged the right of all ships to pass through the Strait without needing to ask for its permission. But that changed immediately after U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint air strikes on Iran on February 28.
Iran’s military quickly began attacking commercial ships with drones and laying mines, forcing most commercial maritime traffic through the Strait to grind to a halt. The exception was those shipowners willing to pay Iran outrageous sums of money for safe passage of their vessels through a new northern channel Iran has established through the Strait along its Persian Gulf coastline.
Iran’s new leaders have said that they don’t care if Trump reimposes the economic sanctions that have devastated Iran’s oil export-based economy.
Majid Shakeri, an Iranian economist and adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the powerful Iranian Parliament speaker, said on Iranian state television. “Either we hold onto the Strait, or every single one of us becomes martyrs for it.”
Apparently, Iran’s leaders thought that after the fighting stopped in April, Trump would not go back to fighting an unpopular war which could raise the price of gasoline and oil four months before midterm elections.
Iran’s Leaders Underestimate Trump
Iran’s leaders badly underestimated Trump’s determination to punish them for going back once again on their word, by hitting Iran militarily even harder, even if that meant ending the ceasefire and going back to war against Iran.
Trump is unlike the former American presidents whom Iran has dealt with and plays by a different set of rules. He is determined to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, and that takes priority for him over any partisan political considerations.
President Trump’s critics blame him for the current problems in the Strait, because he approved the MOU’s language which only prohibits Iran from charging tolls or other fees on ships passing through the Strait during a 60-day initial ceasefire period.
Even worse, Trump’s critics say, was the language he agreed to at the end of the MOU’s fifth point which said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.”
According to some international law experts, this language would appear to cede to Iran a central role in the future management of the strait, including the ability to dictate that ships must sail, with its permission only, through Iran’s territorial waters, enabling Iran to demand the payment of tolls and other fees.
Unclear Mou Language Leads To Differing Interpretations
However, Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based Arab Gulf States Institute, told the New York Times that, with respect to who controls the Strait of Hormuz, “all of international law goes in one direction [by treating the strait as international waters], and the MOU goes in the other direction [putting it at least partially under Iran’s control].”
When reporters asked an unnamed White House official about the language of the MOU during a telephone briefing last Friday, the official said that Iranian officials at the time were already well aware that some ships entering the Strait were using the new route through Oman’s territorial waters. The official stated that the Iranians also clearly understood the MOU’s language to mean that Iran would make “best efforts” to see that ships on Oman’s side of the Strait would enjoy safe passage and not be subject to attack by Iran.
It Is Still Hard To Know Who Is Really Ruling Iran
Particularly after Mojtaba failed to make a public appearance at his own father’s elaborate state funeral in Iran last week, it is doubtful whether he really issued the hardline policy statements that have been attributed to him in Iran’s state-controlled media, including a pledge to avenge his father’s death, a thinly veiled threat against President Trump’s life.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote in a post on X: “We seized the Strait of Hormuz by force, and we will keep it by force.” The committee also declared that the Strait would remain closed to any shipping traffic not approved by Iran “until American intervention in the region ends.” It also rejected one of the clear stipulations in the MOU by declaring that “Iran will manage the Strait of Hormuz, with or without Oman. Based on the Supreme Leader’s instructions, management of the Strait of Hormuz will not return to its previous state. Whether in cooperation with Oman or independently, management of this waterway will be in Iran’s hands.”
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s Speaker of Parliament, and one of its leading negotiators, warned the U.S. in a post on Sunday, “The era of one-sided deals is over. We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking,” and with it posted a copy of Article 5 of the 14-point MOU agreement, which refers to Iran’s role in re-opening the Strait of Hormuz.
But the U.S. Central Command flatly rejected that Iranian claim of authority over the strategic passage as a violation of long-established international maritime law by saying that, “Iran does not control the Strait. It remains an international maritime route. U.S. forces are deployed and ready to ensure it stays that way.”
The U.N.’S Maritime Body Rejects Iran’s Claim To Rule The Strait
Similarly, during a meeting last week in London of the 40-member governing council of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), it passed a non-binding resolution saying it “strongly condemns” Iran’s decision to “establish an entity [called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority] purporting to control traffic through the Strait.”
The resolution called upon the IMO’s member states not to recognize “Iran’s claim of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, its assertions of jurisdiction over the maritime zones of third states in and around the Strait [such as Oman], which violated the sovereignty, sovereign rights and exclusive jurisdiction of these states.” It also refused to accept Iranian decisions aimed at “closing, obstructing, hampering or otherwise interfering with international navigation and the right of transit passage.”
Iran is not a member of the IMO’s governing council, but during the debate last week which led to the passage of the resolution, Iranian representatives told IMO council members that they reject “the selective, politically motivated and legally unfounded allegations” made against Iran. They also claimed that Iran’s steps meant to “safeguard Iran’s sovereignty and vital security interests… do not constitute the closure of the Strait,” which is obviously not true.
Speaking to the same point in an interview with NBC on Sunday, President Trump said about the Strait. “Yes, it is open.” To show his resolve to keep it open, he then said regarding Iranian military capabilities in the Strait, “We bombed them hard last night.” He was referring to the fact that Saturday night, the U.S. Central Command attacked 140 Iranian targets, making a total of 400 targets that the U.S. had struck during a series of three air strikes starting last Tuesday night.
Trump also explained why he has become so skeptical about the sincerity of Iran’s negotiators by noting that they had agreed to a peace deal the day before attacking another ship in the Strait of Hormuz: “[It was] a perfect deal for us, no nuclear, no this, no that, no nothing, they gave up everything,” Trump said. “And then after they left the room, within an hour they launched a drone at a ship.”
Trump then concluded in apparent despair, “These people [the Iranian leaders], there is something wrong with them.”
While the MOU’s failure was widely predicted by the members of the American globalist foreign policy establishment, as well as friends of Israel, Trump still felt the necessity to give diplomacy one last chance to succeed before returning to the use of overwhelming American military force to end the Islamic regime’s menace to Israel, its Persian Gulf neighbors, the global oil and energy markets, and last but not least, to the long-suffering Iranian people.
Trump Still Has The Ability To Surprise His Opponents
His critics have also repeatedly underestimated Trump’s rare abilities as a master deal-maker and his ability to recognize opportunities for success that nobody else could see. That is how he was able, as a political novice, to win the presidential election in 2016, overcome his determined opponents, and achieve several significant economic, domestic agenda, and foreign policy goals as president that none of the experts had believed were possible.
There is no doubt that eliminating the threat from Iran is the greatest challenge to Trump’s presidency yet, but it would be premature and foolish, based upon Trump’s impressive track record, to write off his strategy against Iran as a failure now.
