US and Iran trade more attacks as battle over Hormuz intensifies

The United States and Iran each asserted on Monday they controlled the Strait of Hormuz after a weekend of attacks stretching across the wider Middle East, further threatening any diplomacy to end the war.

The attacks, sparked by Iran striking a container ship Sunday in the strait off the coast of Oman, again underlined that the waterway that once saw a fifth of the world’s traded crude oil and natural gas pass through it remained the key issue in negotiations.

The narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf has seen shipping disrupted since the start of the war as Iran maintained a chokehold on it by attacking commercial vessels around it, intimidating shippers.

Calling into Fox News on Monday, US President Donald Trump said, “we’re taking over the Strait”. Trump also said that “everything was agreed to” in an 11-hour meeting on Sunday, but that Iranian negotiators had called back later and suggested changes. He did not elaborate.

Iran and the US were nearly at the midway point of the 60-day period of an interim deal that was supposed to set up talks for a permanent end to the war. Instead, it has devolved into a series of attacks over the strait and its future, worrying world leaders the Iran war fully could resume.

“A return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences,” United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.