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Iran fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, underscoring the ongoing threat to global energy supplies and complicating efforts to bring it and the United States together for talks to end the war.
The attacks, which Iranian media said were carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, came after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would indefinitely extend the ceasefire with Iran, originally due to expire on Wednesday.
Iran has offered no formal acknowledgment of Trump’s extension.
The attacks reinforced the dangers to traffic in the strait, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas pass in peacetime. The conflict has sent gas prices skyrocketing far beyond the region and raised the cost of food and a wide array of other products.
There have been more than 30 attacks on ships in the Mideast since the war began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
Iran’s ability to restrict traffic through the strait — which leads from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean — has proved a major strategic advantage. As a result the U.S. has aimed to blockade Iranian ports in retaliation, a blockade Trump said would continue.
WATCH | Ceasefire with Iran extended:
Trump unilaterally extends Iran ceasefire
U.S. President Donald Trump used a social media post to unilaterally extend the Iran ceasefire a day before it was set to expire, saying he wanted peace talks to progress. But Iranian officials weren’t optimistic about talks and said war may resume.Iran says ship ignored warnings
Iran opened fire on a container ship in the strait on Wednesday morning, and a second was attacked a short time later, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre.
Iranian state television reported later reported that the ships were in the Revolutionary Guard’s custody and being taken to Iran. It identified the vessels as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas. The ship’s owners could not be immediately reached for comment.
The semiofficial Nour News, Fars and Mehr news agencies then reported the Guard attacked a third vessel called the Euphoria. They said the vessel had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, without elaborating.
The UKMTO said the first ship was attacked by a Revolutionary Guard gunboat that did not hail the ship before firing. It added that nobody was hurt in the attack.
Nour News, however, reported that the Guard only opened fire on the ship after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian armed forces.” Fars described the attack as Iran “lawfully enforcing” its control over the Strait of Hormuz.
While U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have stopped in Iran, Wednesday’s attack in the Strait of Hormuz and earlier American interdictions of Iranian ships suggest the threat remains at sea. (Reuters)
Without any diplomatic agreement, those attacks may continue, likely deterring more ships from even attempting to pass through the strait, and further squeezing global energy supplies.
Pakistan has been working tirelessly to bring both sides together for another 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.
Diggers remove the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes as they look for survivors buried underneath in the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre on Tuesday. (Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images)
Following Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said he hoped it would create “critical space for diplomacy and confidence-building between Iran and the United States,” according to his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric.
Hardline 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 U.S., which devoted much of their airstrike campaign to destroying the county’s ballistic missile arsenal.
In Lebanon, where between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah broke out two days after the U.S. 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 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.