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Iran made preparations to mine the Strait of Hormuz, US sources say
The Strait of Hormuz lies between Oman and Iran and links the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman to the south and the Arabian Sea beyond.
The Iranian military loaded naval mines onto vessels in the Persian Gulf last month, a move that intensified concerns in Washington that Tehran was gearing up to blockade the Strait of Hormuz following Israel’s strikes on sites across Iran, according to two U.S. officials.
The previously unreported preparations, which were detected by U.S. intelligence, occurred some time after Israel launched its initial missile attack against Iran on June 13, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, Reuters reported.
The loading of the mines – which have not been deployed in the strait – suggests that Tehran may have been serious about closing one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, a move that would have escalated an already-spiraling conflict and severely hobbled global commerce.
About one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz and a blockage would likely have spiked world energy prices.
Global benchmark oil prices have instead fallen more than 10% since the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, driven in part by relief that the conflict did not trigger significant disruptions in the oil trade.
On June 22, shortly after the U.S. bombed three of Iran’s key nuclear sites in a bid to cripple Tehran’s nuclear program, Iran’s parliament reportedly backed a measure to block the strait.
That decision was not binding, and it was up to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to make a final decision on the closure, Iran’s Press TV said at the time. Iran has over the years threatened to close the strait but has never followed through on that threat.
Reuters was not able to determine precisely when during the Israel-Iran air war Tehran loaded the mines, which – if deployed – would have effectively stopped ships from moving through the key thoroughfare.
It is also unclear if the mines have since been unloaded.
The sources did not disclose how the United States determined that the mines had been put on the Iranian vessels, but such intelligence is typically gathered through satellite imagery, clandestine human sources or a combination of both methods, read the report.
Asked for comment about Iran’s preparations, a White House official said: “Thanks to the President’s brilliant execution of Operation Midnight Hammer, successful campaign against the Houthis, and maximum pressure campaign, the Strait of Hormuz remains open, freedom of navigation has been restored, and Iran has been significantly weakened.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Iranian mission at the United Nations also did not respond to requests for comment.
The two officials said the U.S. government has not ruled out the possibility that loading the mines was a ruse. The Iranians could have prepared the mines to convince Washington that Tehran was serious about closing the strait, but without intending to do so, the officials said.
Iran’s military could have also simply been making necessary preparations in the event that Iran’s leaders gave the order, Reuters reported.
The Strait of Hormuz lies between Oman and Iran and links the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman to the south and the Arabian Sea beyond.
It is 21 miles (34 km) wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lane just 2 miles wide in either direction.
OPEC members Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq export most of their crude via the strait, mainly to Asia. Qatar, among the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas exporters, sends almost all of its LNG through the strait.
Iran also exports most of its crude through the passage, which in theory limits Tehran’s appetite to shut the strait. But Tehran has nonetheless dedicated significant resources to making sure it can do so if it deems necessary.
As of 2019, Iran maintained more than 5,000 naval mines, which could be rapidly deployed with the help of small, high-speed boats, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated at the time, Reuters reported.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, is charged with protecting commerce in the region. The U.S. Navy has typically kept four mine countermeasure vessels, or MCM vessels, in Bahrain, though those ships are being replaced by another type of vessel called a littoral combat ship, or LCS, which also has anti-mine capabilities.
All anti-mine ships had been temporarily removed from Bahrain in the days leading up to the U.S. strikes on Iran in anticipation of a potential retaliatory attack on Fifth Fleet headquarters.
Ultimately, Iran’s immediate retaliation was limited to a missile attack on a U.S. military base in nearby Qatar.
U.S. officials, however, have not ruled out further retaliatory measures by Iran.
Regional
Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.
Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.
Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.
The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of the conflict.
The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.
“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
About an hour after Trump’s post, the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.
The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.
A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.
Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty and security. It urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”
Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began leaving through the strait over the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.
Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.
In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the Nabatieh area.
Iran accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.
Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.
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US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.
U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.
Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.
Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.
Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.
“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
The U.S. military said it would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.
Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.
“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” Vance said on X.
Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.
On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at eastern Hormozgan as saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.
The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.
“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. If the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.
“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted on X.
Before the renewed outbreak of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.
Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.
Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to assuage concerns about a spike in global food prices.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.
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