attacked seven Iranian fast boats<\/a> in the strait while Iran said it had fired warning shots at a US vessel. Both sides denied the respective claims. Two commercial ships reported attacks and one said it had successfully exited the strait under a US military escort, as part of Donald Trump’s plan to unblock the strait.<\/p>\nSpeaking at the White House, Rubio said that while Trump wanted a deal, “That is so far not the route that Iran has chosen” adding: “What that may lead to in the future is speculative.”<\/p>\n
He said US and Israeli attacks on Iran had caused “generational destruction to their economy” and the country’s leaders should “check themselves before they wreck themselves in the direction that they’re going”.<\/p>\n
Rubio’s comments echoed earlier remarks by defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the ceasefire with Iran was “not over”.<\/p>\n
“Right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely,” Hegseth told a press conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Dan Caine, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while Iran had attacked US forces 10 times since a ceasefire began, these attacks were “below the threshold” of resuming fighting “at this point”. <\/p>\n
Trump was later asked by reporters what would constitute a breach of the ceasefire by Iran. “You’ll find out because I’ll let you know,” he responded. He also said he believed a negotiated settlement with Iran to end the conflict was still possible.<\/p>\n
The various comments from American officials suggest that the US has little desire or appetite for a return to full-scale operations that could further disturb markets, send prices skyrocketing and be unpopular with large swathes of Americans.<\/p>\n
Trump has also said he is in discussions with Japan over the strait’s reopening and expects to have a positive conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping about it when he visits China next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In early April, the US and Iran announced a ceasefire under which Iran ended its drone and missile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-568278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}