The U.S. military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after President Donald Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called “Project Freedom.”
WASHINGTON/CAIRO:A fragile truce in the Middle East was under strain on Tuesday after the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire in the Gulf as they wrestled for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said in a social media post on Tuesday breaches of the four-week-old ceasefire by the United States and its allies had endangered shipping and energy transit through the vital waterway.
“We know well that the continuation of the current situation is unbearable for the United States, while we have not even begun yet,” he said.
Attacks in the Gulf
The U.S. military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after President Donald Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called “Project Freedom.”
The narrow waterway, which carries a large share of global supplies of oil, fertilizer and other commodities, has been virtually closed since the U.S. and Israel began attacks on Iran on February 28, causing price rises around the world.
Several merchant ships in the Gulf reported explosions or fires on Monday, and an oil port in the United Arab Emirates, which hosts a large U.S. military base, was set ablaze by Iranian missiles.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has effectively closed the strait with threats of mines, drones, missiles and fast attack craft, while the United States has responded by blockading Iranian ports.
However, U.S. officials sought to maintain a shaky ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday while pushing forward an operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as U.S. ally the United Arab Emirates said it suffered a new wave of Iranian missile and drone strikes.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized the effort to escort stranded tankers through the strait as defensive in nature, one day after the U.S. military said it had destroyed several Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones.
“There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first,” Rubio told reporters at the White House.
The Strait of Hormuz has been virtually shut since the United States and Israel began attacks on Iran on February 28, triggering disruptions that have pushed up commodity prices around the world.
Iran had effectively sealed off the strait, which handles one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply, by threatening to deploy mines, drones, missiles and fast-attack craft. The United States has countered by blockading Iranian ports and mounting escorted transits for commercial vessels.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. had successfully secured a path through the waterway and that hundreds of commercial ships were lining up to pass through. The four-week-old truce with Iran was not over, he added.
“Right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely,” he said.
General Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iranian attacks against U.S. forces fell “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point”.
Asked what Iran would need to do to violate the ceasefire, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “They know what not to do.”
‘RIGHT TO RESPOND’
Shortly after Hegseth spoke, the UAE’s defence ministry said its air defences were again dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran, though Iran’s joint military command denied carrying out attacks.
The UAE’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the attacks were a serious escalation and posed a direct threat to the country’s security, adding that the Gulf Arab state reserved its “full and legitimate right” to respond.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Monday’s events showed there was no military solution to the crisis. He said peace talks were progressing with Pakistan’s mediation, and warned the U.S. and the UAE against being drawn into a “quagmire.”
The U.S. military said two U.S. merchant ships made it through the strait, without saying when, with the support of Navy guided-missile destroyers.
Iran denied any crossings had taken place, though shipping company Maersk said the Alliance Fairfax, a U.S.-flagged ship, exited the Gulf under U.S. military escort on Monday.
The commander of U.S. forces in the region said his fleet had destroyed six small Iranian boats, which Iran also denied. Iranian media quoted a military commander as saying U.S. forces targeted two small commercial boats, killing five civilians.
Iran also said on Monday it had fired on a U.S. warship approaching the strait, forcing it to turn around. Iranian officials later described the fire as warning shots.
Reuters could not independently verify events in the strait as the two sides issued contradictory statements.
South Korea said one of its merchant ships, HMM Namu, suffered an explosion and fire in its engine room while in the strait, though no one aboard was hurt. A government spokesperson said it was unclear if the fire was caused by an attack.
Also on Monday, the British maritime security agency UKMTO reported two ships had been hit off the coast of the UAE, and the Emirati oil company ADNOC said one of its empty oil tankers was hit by Iranian drones.
UAE Oil Port Ablaze
Iranian authorities released a map of what they said was an expanded maritime area now under Iranian control, stretching beyond the strait to include lengthy sections of the UAE coastline.
After a day of reported drone and missile attacks inside the UAE, including one that caused a fire at Fujairah, an important oil port, the UAE said Iranian attacks marked a serious escalation and it reserved the right to respond.
The Iranian map included Fujairah and another Emirati port, Khorfakkan, both of which lie on the Gulf of Oman and which the UAE has relied on since the start of the conflict to bypass the blocked strait.
If Iran were able to enforce control over access to those ports it would amount to a near-total maritime siege of the Gulf Arab state.
Iran’s state television said military officials had confirmed they attacked the UAE in response to the “U.S. military’s adventurism.”
UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said on Tuesday Abu Dhabi had received messages of solidarity from regional and other allies, which he said “affirm that Iran is the aggressor, responsible for the escalation of the crisis” in the Gulf.
Hundreds of vessels were seen clustering near Dubai on Tuesday, as more ships moved away from a still-empty Strait of Hormuz in response to Iran’s efforts to widen its area of control.
A weeks-long ceasefire between the US and Iran has begun to look increasingly fragile, with the two sides exchanging fire as Washington said it had opened a passage through the waterway and CBS reported two American destroyers had crossed into the Persian Gulf.
Since Monday, nearly 60 vessels across different types sailed into an area off Dubai monitored by Bloomberg News — an unusually large number even for waters that have seen carriers clustering since the start of the war. At least 363 ships are currently in the area, according to their signals, compared with an average of 294 the seven days prior.
Dubai falls just outside the new Hormuz control area defined by Tehran, which extends south from the strait to Umm al-Quwain, along the United Arab Emirates coast and inside the gulf.
Monitoring vessels in the Persian Gulf has been complicated since the start of the war by the number of ships going “dark”, or switching off transponders, and by increased electronic interference, as evidenced by the emergence of oddly-shaped clusters of ships. The exact shape of the cluster around Dubai, therefore, may not capture reality on the water perfectly, but will show the trend in maritime movement.
The grouping has increased over the last day as crew members report radio broadcasts warning vessels of new boundaries defended by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Attacks on the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman, meanwhile, have underscored the expanded Iranian command zone — and kept the strait largely devoid of traffic through Tuesday morning.
“The US is attempting to level the power balance in the strait and that’s been reciprocated against by Iran. It’s escalation,” said Anoop Singh, global head of shipping research at Oil Brokerage Ltd. “I’m not expecting a quick reopening of bi-directional flows through the strait.”
Peace Efforts Stalled
The war in the Middle East has cost thousands of lives and roiled the global economy. U.S. and Iranian officials have held one round of face-to-face peace talks, but attempts to set up further meetings have failed.
Trump has said the U.S.-Israeli attacks aimed to eliminate what he called imminent threats from Iran, citing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, its support for Hamas and Hezbollah and its “menacing activities.”
Iranian state media said on Sunday that the U.S. had conveyed its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal via Pakistan, and Iran was reviewing it. Neither side gave details.
The proposal would defer talks on Iran’s nuclear energy and research programs until after agreements to end the war and on shipping security. Trump said over the weekend he was still studying it, but would probably reject it.
The latest U.S. intelligence shows limited damage to Iran’s nuclear program since the war began, officials told Reuters.
Trump wants to remove Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium to prevent it from processing it to the point where it could make a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking to build a nuclear bomb.