Trump says US will not lift Hormuz blockade until deal struck with Iran as talks in limbo

LAST UPDATE | 9 hrs ago

DONALD TRUMP HAS said he will not lift the blockade near the Strait of Hormuz until a deal is struck with Iran to end the war.

It comes as Iran said it has yet to decide whether to attend a new round of truce negotiations with the United States.

The US attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to get around the naval blockade on Sunday – the first interception since its blockade of Iranian ports began last week.

Iran will respond soon, its state broadcaster said later, calling the armed boarding an act of piracy.

The events threw into question both the fragile ceasefire and the US president’s earlier announcement that negotiators would head to Pakistan today for another round of talks with Iran.

“THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a ‘DEAL,’ is absolutely destroying Iran,” Trump said on social media today.

“They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run.”

Trump earlier said a US navy guided missile destroyer in the Gulf of Oman warned the ship, the Touska, to stop and then “stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom”. US marines had custody of the US-sanctioned vessel and were “seeing what’s on board!”.

It was not clear whether anyone was hurt. The US Central Command said the destroyer had issued “repeated warnings over a six-hour period”.

Minutes after the ship seizure was announced, Iranian state media reported on president Masoud Pezeshkian’s phone conversation with Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif earlier on Sunday.

US actions have led to increased suspicion that the US will repeat previous patterns and “betray diplomacy”, the reports cited Pezeshkian as saying.

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Since initial talks in Islamabad ended without a deal earlier this month, both sides have accused the other of breaching the ceasefire.

“We have no plans for the next round of negotiation, and no decision has been made in this regard,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said today.

“The US is carrying out behaviours that do not in any way indicate seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic process,” he added, calling an ongoing US blockade of Iranian ports and its recent seizure of a ship “clear violations of the ceasefire”.

The US delegation was due to head to Pakistan “soon”, a source familiar with the plan told AFP today, with Trump telling PBS News that Iran was “supposed to be there. We agreed to be there”.

The US president said that if the ceasefire ended without a peace deal “then lots of bombs start going off”, separately telling Bloomberg News it was “highly unlikely” he would extend the two-week truce.

Based on its start time, the truce theoretically expires overnight Tuesday, Tehran time, though in his comments to Bloomberg, Trump said the end was a day later, on Wednesday evening Washington time.

Elusive off-ramp

In spite of the uncertainty surrounding the talks in Pakistan, security has been visibly stepped up in the capital Islamabad.

A White House official said vice president JD Vance would lead the delegation, joined by Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Separately, Iran’s state broadcaster said foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told his Pakistani counterpart on a phone call that recent US actions, rhetoric and contradictions were signs of “bad intentions and lack of seriousness in diplomacy”.

Pakistan did not confirm a second round of talks, but authorities began tightening security in Islamabad. A regional official involved in the efforts said mediators were finalising preparations and US advance security teams were on the ground.

The White House said vice president JD Vance, who led the first round of historic face-to-face talks over 21 hours last weekend, would lead the US delegation to Pakistan with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump has been under pressure to find an off-ramp since Tehran moved to choke off the Strait of Hormuz.

His announcement on new talks repeated his threats against Iranian infrastructure that have drawn widespread criticism and warnings of war crimes. If Iran does not agree to the US-proposed deal “the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran”, he wrote.

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Ships remained unable to transit the critical waterway amid threats from Iran and the US blockade of ships heading to and from Iranian ports. Hundreds of vessels were waiting at each end for clearance.

One of the worst global energy crises in decades threatened to deepen. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil trade normally passes through the strait, along with critical supplies of fertiliser for the world’s farmers, natural gas and humanitarian supplies for places in dire need such as Afghanistan and Sudan.

Iran had announced the strait’s reopening after a 10-day truce between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon took hold on Friday.

But then Trump said the US blockade “will remain in full force” until Tehran reaches a deal with the United States, and Iran said it would again enforce the restrictions it imposed early in the war. On Saturday, Iran fired at ships trying to transit.

For the Islamic Republic, the strait’s closure is perhaps its most powerful weapon, inflicting political pain on Trump. For the US, the blockade squeezes Iran’s already weakened economy. Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned that any vessel attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without permission “will be targeted”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a phone call today that “normal traffic” through the vital conduit for oil and gas shipments “should be maintained”, state media said.

Another major issue in the US-Iran negotiations has been Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, which Trump said on Friday it had agreed to hand over.

But Iran’s foreign ministry has said the stockpile, thought to be buried from US bombing in last June’s 12-day war, was “not going to be transferred anywhere”.

Baqaei said that the issue was “never raised as an option” in talks with US negotiators.

The war is now in its eighth week after the US and Israel launched it on 28 February during talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

At least 3,000 people have been killed in Iran, more than 2,290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 US service members throughout the region have been killed.