The Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about a fifth of the world\u2019s oil, has again become the chaotic centre of the United States-Israel war on Iran, as a standoff between Washington and Tehran is complicating efforts to end the war.<\/p>\n
Iran on Saturday reversed its decision on reopening the strait, and its military opened fire at a ship trying to pass through the waterway after US President Donald Trump said Washington will continue its blockade on Iranian ports.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Trump has refused to end the blockade until a deal is finalised. On Saturday, he said that there have been \u201cvery good\u201d discussions, but Washington won\u2019t be \u201cblackmailed\u201d.<\/p>\n After a short-lived rise in transit attempts on Saturday, ships in the Persian Gulf once again stayed put, after reports of vessels coming under fire mid-passage and being forced to withdraw.<\/p>\n Their pullback restored the strait to its pre-ceasefire status, raising the risk of a worsening global energy crunch and increasing the likelihood of renewed fighting.<\/p>\n Here is what you need to know:<\/p>\n Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Friday said the strait would be open for commercial vessels during the truce, which ends on April 22, in \u201cline with the ceasefire in Lebanon\u201d.<\/p>\n However, Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced a clear reversal in Iran\u2019s position, saying the Strait of Hormuz would not return to its \u201cprevious state\u201d, amid the blockade of Iranian ports.<\/p>\n The IRGC\u2019s joint military command said the US has \u201ccontinued acts of piracy and maritime theft under the guise of a so-called blockade\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cFor this reason, control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state, and this strategic waterway is now under strict management and control by the armed forces,\u201d said the statement, cited by Iranian broadcaster IRIB.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil the United States restores full freedom of navigation for vessels travelling from Iran to their destinations and back, the status of the Strait of Hormuz will remain tightly controlled and in its previous condition,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is Iran\u2019s chief negotiator in talks with the US, said it was \u201cimpossible for others to pass\u201d the strategic strait without Iran\u2019s consent. He called Washington\u2019s blockade \u201cignorant\u201d and \u201cfoolish\u201d, saying Tehran would not allow others to transit the strait if its own ships were blocked.<\/p>\n On Saturday, he said that major differences remain, despite some progress towards a deal.<\/p>\n In a Truth Social post on Sunday, the US president \u200caccused Iran of violating the ceasefire agreement, but added that US negotiators will be heading to Islamabad, Pakistan on Monday to strike a deal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope they take it because, if they don\u2019t, the United States is going to knock out every single power plant, and every single bridge, in Iran,\u201d he said in the post.<\/p>\n Iran on Sunday said that it was tightening its control over the waterway once again in response to the US blockade of Iranian ports, which began on April 14. Tehran says the blockade violates the terms of the ceasefire.<\/p>\n Trump on Saturday said that the US was having \u201cvery good conversations\u201d with Iran, but he noted that Tehran wanted to close the important oil corridor again and that it could not blackmail the US with such a move.<\/p>\n Lloyd\u2019s List, a maritime firm, said traffic in the Straight of Hormuz had come to a halt after Iranian forces fired on several ships on Saturday.<\/p>\n The United \u2060\u2060Kingdom \u2060\u2060Maritime Trade Operations agency said it received a report \u2060\u2060of a tanker being fired upon by what it \u200c\u200csaid were two gunboats linked to the IRGC.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, India summoned the Iranian ambassador in New Delhi and expressed deep concern that two Indian-flagged ships had come under fire in the strait, the government said.<\/p>\n Abas Aslani, a senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, said the two sides are \u201cengaging in war rhetoric ahead of any possible escalation and military conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems that they are pressuring each other to win concessions \u2013 and we are not there yet,\u201d Aslani told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are speculations that maybe the US is possibly planning to engage in limited strikes against Iran, but Iran has been saying that it will retaliate strongly,\u201d he said. \u201cThis might end again in a wider conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest contention is over hardening positions on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, chief among them being Tehran\u2019s nuclear enrichment capability.<\/p>\n On Friday, Trump said Washington would obtain Iran\u2019s enriched uranium, calling it \u201cnuclear dust\u201d and referring to the 440kg (970lbs) believed to be buried at sites hit by US strikes last year. He repeated on Truth Social that \u201cthe USA will get all Nuclear \u2018Dust\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking to Reuters news agency, Trump said the US would work with Iran \u201cat a nice leisurely pace\u201d and \u201cstart excavating with big machinery\u201d to recover the material.<\/p>\n In a rebuke to Trump, Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Washington had no justification for depriving Iran of its nuclear rights.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump says Iran cannot make use of its nuclear rights, but doesn\u2019t say for what crime. Who is he to deprive a nation of its rights?\u201d Pezeshkian asked, according to the Iranian Students\u2019 News Agency.<\/p>\n Israel and the US have repeatedly accused Iran of enriching uranium to develop nuclear weapons. But Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes and that it has honoured its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.<\/p>\n Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US National Intelligence, testified to Congress in March 2025 that the US \u201ccontinues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.\u201d<\/p>\n Khamenei was killed on February 28 in US and Israeli strikes. His son Mojtaba Khamenei has been named his successor.<\/p>\n A ceasefire in Lebanon had also been a key Iranian demand before it agreed to the two-week truce between the US-Israeli side and Iran.<\/p>\n While a 10-day ceasefire is technically in place between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, it remains fragile. Israel has carried out strikes despite the truce, and its forces have created a Gaza-like \u201cyellow line\u201d to create a buffer zone.<\/p>\n The truce was declared just days after Lebanon and Israel held their first face-to-face negotiations in decades in Washington. According to Iran\u2019s FM Araghchi, the brief reopening of the Strait of Hormuz came in response to the ceasefire being extended to Lebanon.<\/p>\n Hezbollah has condemned the ceasefire agreement as \u201can insult to our country\u201d and \u201ca slippery slope with no end in sight\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cA ceasefire means a complete cessation of all hostilities\u201d, the Lebanon-based group said. \u201cBecause we do not trust this enemy, the resistance fighters will remain in the field, ready to respond to any violations of the aggression. A ceasefire cannot be unilateral; it must be mutual\u201d.<\/p>\n Hezbollah is Tehran\u2019s most powerful regional ally and a core pillar of the \u201caxis of resistance\u201d \u2013 a network of armed groups across the Middle East aligned with Iran against Israel, including Yemen\u2019s Houthis and several factions in Iraq.<\/p>\n The group joined the fighting after the Israeli army killed Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Khamenei in its initial strikes on Tehran.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about a fifth of the world\u2019s oil, has again become the chaotic centre of the United States-Israel war on Iran, as a standoff between Washington and Tehran is complicating efforts to end the war. Iran on Saturday reversed its decision on reopening the strait, and its military opened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
What has Iran said?<\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/INTERACTIVE-US-naval-blockade-of-Irans-ports-APRIL-13-2026-1776092129.png?quality=80\")
What has the US said?<\/h2>\n
What is happening in the strait right now?<\/h2>\n
What are other sticking points between the US and Iran?<\/h2>\n
Nuclear enrichment<\/h2>\n
Lebanon<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"