{"id":617812,"date":"2026-04-19T20:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T20:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/617812\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T20:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T20:59:11","slug":"iran-war-live-updates-donald-trump-says-us-navy-has-opened-fire-on-an-iranian-cargo-ship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/617812\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war live updates: Donald Trump says US Navy has opened fire on an Iranian cargo ship"},"content":{"rendered":"

33m agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 8:25pm<\/p>\n

Kuwaiti-American journalist missing for weeks<\/p>\n

Kuwaiti authorities have detained prominent US-Kuwaiti journalist\u00a0Ahmed Shihab-Eldin,\u00a0who has not been seen for six weeks during a wider crackdown by Gulf nations on people filming or posting footage during\u00a0the Iran war, according to a media watchdog.<\/p>\n

Shihab-Eldin, a 41-year-old who was visiting family in Kuwait,\u00a0has not posted online or been seen in public since March 2, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday.<\/p>\n

CPJ said he had been charged with\u00a0spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone.<\/p>\n

\"AAhmed Shihab-Eldin has not been seen since early March. (AFP: Noushad Thekkayil\/NurPhoto)<\/p>\n

Kuwait enacted a law on March 15 including a provision carrying prison terms of up to 10 years for spreading false rumours related to military entities with the intent of undermining confidence in them.<\/p>\n

“We call on Kuwait to release Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and drop all charges against him,\u201d said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cJournalism is not a crime.”<\/p>\n

The call for his release was echoed by UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese, who called him a “journalist of rare strength, integrity and compassion.”<\/p>\n

Shihab-Eldin describes himself as an independent journalist who has worked for various international media outlets including The New York Times, HBO, Vice, PBS, BBC and Al Jazeera. It was unclear if he was working, as well as seeing family, during his visit to Kuwait.<\/p>\n

Reporting with Reuters<\/p>\n

42m agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 8:15pm<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcf7: Iranians protest against US, Israel with ceasefire days from expiry\"Women(Reuters )<\/p>\n

Photos supplied to Reuters by the West Asia News Agency reveal hundreds of people taking to the streets of Tehran to protest against the US and Israel.<\/p>\n

Reuters reports the protests took place yesterday with the fragile ceasefire on the verge of breaking after Iran reportedly fired on ships<\/a> in the Strait of Hormuz and Trump said the US had\u00a0seized a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman<\/a> this morning.<\/p>\n

The ceasefire is due to lapse on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"Men(Reuters)<\/p>\n

53m agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 8:05pm<\/p>\n

Closed, then open, now closed again: A Strait of Hormuz timeline<\/p>\n

It has been a busy weekend of developments in the Middle East as the US and Iran continue to pressure each other about a potential peace deal.<\/p>\n

At the centre of the tension has been the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas travel in peacetime.<\/p>\n

Here’s a quick timeline of how the Strait of Hormuz crisis has played out:<\/p>\n

Start of the war: Iran moves to close the strait to oil and gas tankers, hammering the global economy and roiling markets.Monday last week: A US Navy blockade of Iranian-linked vessels navigating the Strait of Hormuz begins.Friday: Iran briefly reopens the strait in recognition of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire.Saturday: Iran closes the strait again over the continuing US naval blockade. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei on Sunday said the blockade was “a violation” of the ceasefire and illegal collective punishment of the Iranian people.<\/p>\n

A handful of oil and gas tankers transited the strait early on Saturday during the brief reopening, but by early Sunday tracking data showed the waterway empty of shipping.<\/p>\n

Reporting with AFP<\/p>\n

1h agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 7:56pm<\/p>\n

More on US Navy opening fire on an Iranian ship<\/p>\n

By Middle East Correspondent Matthew Doran<\/p>\n

We reported earlier\u00a0Donald Trump <\/a>saying the US Navy had opened fire on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship as it tried to get through the Strait of Hormuz. Now we have more detailed information that it was\u00a0attempting to break the American blockade of the shipping channel.<\/p>\n

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president says an American destroyer intercepted the ship in the Gulf of Oman and now has \u201cfull custody” of it.<\/p>\n

He says the Iranian crew refused to listen to warnings to stop, so the navy “stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room”.<\/p>\n

The incident comes hours after President Trump said there would be further talks in Pakistan on Monday night between the US and Iran on a deal to end the war.<\/p>\n

He reiterated his threats to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges if the regime in Tehran refused to agree.<\/p>\n

Iranian state media had reported the country wouldn\u2019t send a delegation to the talks because of excessive demands from Washington and the US blockade on Iran.<\/p>\n

The two-week ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran is due to lapse on Wednesday morning local time.<\/p>\n

1h agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 7:30pm<\/p>\n

‘Global economy cannot afford more uncertainty’, oil company CEO says<\/p>\n

The CEO of the Abu Dhabi state-owned oil company ADNOC, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, has issued a dire warning that the Strait of Hormuz must be reopened.<\/p>\n

“Almost 600 million barrels of oil blocked so far. 50 days of mounting pressure on LNG, jet fuel, fertilizer, and the essentials that the world depends on,” Sultan Al Jaber wrote on X.<\/p>\n

ADNOC reportedly produces more than 4 million barrels per day.<\/p>\n

“Behind every missing barrel, bills go up for ordinary people everywhere. The global economy cannot afford more uncertainty,” the sultan wrote.<\/p>\n

It’s been reported Iran has been charging some ships $US2 million<\/a>\u00a0in Chinese Yuan for safe passage, which the sultan called “a protection racket”:<\/p>\n

“Hormuz belongs to the world. It must be returned to the world. Exactly as it was.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"33m agoSun 19 Apr 2026 at 8:25pm Kuwaiti-American journalist missing for weeks Kuwaiti authorities have detained prominent US-Kuwaiti…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76070,22131,7136,43,5575,44,6216,15299,143126,22132,41,39,42,40,3281],"class_list":{"0":"post-617812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-arms","9":"tag-ceasefire","10":"tag-deal","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nuclear","15":"tag-pakistan","16":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","17":"tag-talks","18":"tag-top-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topnews","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}