Donald Trump has warned Iran not to “blackmail” the US with its flip-flopping on the status of the strait of Hormuz, after Tehran reversed its decision to reopen the waterway to shipping.
But the US president again struck a positive tone that a deal with Iran could be possible.
“They [Iran] got a little cute, as they have been doing for 47 years,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We’re talking to them. They wanted to close up the strait again – you know, as they’ve been doing for years – and they can’t blackmail us.”
He added: “It’s going actually along very well, and we’ll see, but we’ll have some information by the end of the day.”
The US military is preparing in coming days to board Iran-linked oil tankers and seize commercial ships in international waters, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday citing US officials.
The Iranian military has continued to tighten its grip on the strait of Hormuz, attacking several commercial vessels on Saturday as it declared the waterway was being “strictly controlled” by Iran. Shipping companies are left scrambling a day after Iran’s foreign minister said the strait was fully open to commercial traffic, an announcement that was welcomed by Trump.
Two Indian-flagged vessels carrying crude oil were attacked on Saturday while attempting to cross the strait of Hormuz, India’s ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
Tehran’s ambassador to New Delhi, Mohammad Fathali, was called in for a meeting with India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, during which Misri conveyed India’s deep concern at the shooting incident involving two Indian-flagged ships in the strait of Hormuz. Misri urged the ambassador to convey India’s views to the authorities in Iran and resume at the earliest the process of facilitating India-bound ships across the strait.
On the night of 27 February, the day before the US and Israel would carry out strikes on Iran, an unusual influx of about 150 accounts on the online betting market Polymarket placed bets that the US would strike Iran the next day. Analysis found the bets totalled $855,000, with 16 accounts pocketing more than $100,000 each.
In this article, Guardian reporter Lauren Aratani looks at the suspiciously well-timed financial bets on the Iran war and the serious ethical and legal concerns they raise.
Aratani explores how prediction markets may be enabling people to profit from inside knowledge of geopolitical events, potentially even before they happen.
You can read the full report here:
Hezbollah has denied it was involved in the deadly attack against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon which killed a French soldier.
A UN peacekeeper was killed and three others were injured after a patrol came under attack from “non-state actors”, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, identified the dead peacekeeper as Florian Montorio, a French national, and suggested in a statement that Hezbollah was responsible.
The Hezbollah-owned al-Manar TV, reported: “Hezbollah denied any involvement in the incident with Unifil forces in the south and called for caution in assigning blame and judgment.”
Al-Manar reported a further statement from the Iran-backed group, in which it said it was “surprised by the positions that have been quick to level baseless accusations, while these parties remain silent and make no sound when the Israeli enemy attacks Unifil forces”.
Donald Trump has warned Iran not to “blackmail” the US with its flip-flopping on the status of the strait of Hormuz, after Tehran reversed its decision to reopen the waterway to shipping.
But the US president again struck a positive tone that a deal with Iran could be possible.
“They [Iran] got a little cute, as they have been doing for 47 years,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We’re talking to them. They wanted to close up the strait again – you know, as they’ve been doing for years – and they can’t blackmail us.”
He added: “It’s going actually along very well, and we’ll see, but we’ll have some information by the end of the day.”
Iran’s supreme national security council, the country’s highest decision-making body under the supreme leader, said it is reviewing “new proposals” put forward by the US, according to Iranian media.
In a statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, the Iran security council said the Pakistani army chief, Asim Munir, who has just concluded a three-day trip to Iran, relayed new proposals put forward by the US, which Tehran “is considering and has not yet responded to”.
It added that it will resume control over the strait of Hormuz “until the end of the war is definitively concluded”, warning that as long as the US naval blockade of Iranian port continues, Tehran will “regard it as a breach of the ceasefire and will prevent the conditional and limited reopening of the strait of Hormuz”.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) has issued two further alerts relating to attacks and suspicious activity near the strait of Hormuz.
UKMTO said it received a report of a container ship “being hit by an unknown projectile” about 25 nautical miles northeast of Oman. It said some of the containers were damaged but no fire or environmental impact were reported.
In a separate alert, UKMTO said it received a report of suspicious activity about 3 nautical miles east of Oman, after a captain of a cruise ship spotted “a splash in close proximity of the vessel”.
Earlier today, UKMTO said it received a report that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ships had fired at a tanker near the strait. The ship’s captain reported that the crew was safe, UKMTO added.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is asking if anybody has “looked at how badly the country of Spain is doing”.
While Spain has been especially critical of the US – with Trump responding in kind – over its decision to go to war with Iran, it is not clear what has brought on the US president’s latest verbal attack against the country.
The Spanish government is hosting a “Global Progressive Mobilisation” summit of left-wing leaders from across Europe and Latin America in Barcelona this weekend. While Trump was not specifically mentioned in public remarks, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said: “We all see the attacks against the multilateral system, the repeated attempts to undermine international law and the dangerous normalisation of the use of force.” This is being widely interpreted as a swipe at Trump, particularly when Sánchez has not held back in previous comments about the US president.
In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump said:
Has anybody looked at how badly the country of Spain is doing. Their financial numbers, despite contributing almost nothing to NATO and their military defense, are absolutely horrendous. Sad to watch!!!”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has vowed to prosecute those who targeted French UN peacekeepers, killing one and wounding three.
In a statement shared by the presidency, Aoun expressed his condolences to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call, condemning the incident and vowing that Beirut “will not hesitate to pursue those involved and bring them to justice”.
A senior Hezbollah official has said his group is not concerned by Lebanon’s planned direct talks with Israel, labelling them a failure.
In a press conference in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Mahmud Qamati said Hezbollah was “not concerned with the negotiations being conducted by the state” as they were “a failure, weak, defeated… and submissive negotiations”.
He added:
The resistance is the one that imposes. We are the land… and we are the ones who draw up the decisions, not those who have an official status.
He added that while his group did not mind Beirut “coordinating with us… not in this way that leads to surrender”.
Unifil has now put out the following statement on the attack in Lebanon:
This morning, a Unifil patrol clearing explosive ordnance along a road in the village of Ghanduriyah to re-establish links with isolated Unifil positions came under small-arms fire from non-state-actors.
Unifil calls on the Government of Lebanon to swiftly initiate an investigation to identify and hold the perpetrators accountable for the crimes committed against Unifil peacekeepers.
We now have the full statement from Macron, who has blamed Hezbollah for the death of the French soldier.
France’s president said:
Sergeant Major Florian Montorio of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment in Montauban was killed this morning in southern Lebanon during an attack against Unifil (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon).
Three of his comrades were wounded and evacuated.
He added:
All indications suggest that Hezbollah is responsible for this attack. France demands that the Lebanese authorities immediately arrest those responsible and take responsibility alongside Unifil.
Emmanuel Macron has just announced that a French soldier, working as a UN peacekeeper, was killed in Lebanon this morning.
We’ll bring you more on this shortly…
The US Central Command (Centcom) said American forces were enforcing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, claiming 23 ships have complied with their orders to turn around.
The statement followed Iran’s earlier announcement that it has reimposed “strict control” of the strait of Hormuz over the continuing US blockade.
Centcom said since commencement of the blockade on Monday, “23 ships have complied with direction from US forces to turn around”.
It continued: “American forces are enforcing a maritime blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas.”
It added that Apache helicopters were “flying in and around the strait providing a visible presence in support of freedom of navigation”.
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said French UN peacemakers came under attack in Lebanon, as he called for an urgent investigation into the incident.
He did not say who launched the attack against the French contingent of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), which has been patrolling areas south of the country.
In a statement on X, Salam said:
I strongly condemn today’s attack on members of the French battalion serving with Unifil. I have given strict instructions for an immediate investigation to be carried out to establish the circumstances of this attack and to hold the perpetrators to account. It goes without saying that such irresponsible behaviour causes great harm to Lebanon and its relations with friendly nations around the world that support it.
There has been no immediate comment from Unifil.
Following initial talks between the US and Iran last weekend in Pakistan, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said a second date cannot be set until both sides “have agreed on the framework”.
Speaking to reporters at a diplomatic forum in Antalya, Turkey, he said: “We do not wish to engage in any negotiations or meetings doomed to failure and which could serve as a pretext for further escalation.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed carrying out strikes in southern Lebanon yesterday in response to what it said were ceasefire violations by Hezbollah.
It is the first confirmed Israeli military action since the ceasefire in Lebanon took effect at midnight on Friday.
The IDF said its troops operating south of the so-called “yellow line” in southern Lebanon, which demarcates an area occupied by the Israeli military, “identified terrorists who violated the ceasefire agreements and approached the forces from north of the yellow line in a manner that posed an immediate threat”.
The IDF said its air force and ground troops “struck the terrorists in several areas in southern Lebanon” to “remove the threat”.
As reports come in of Iranian gun boats firing at a tanker near the strait of Hormuz, Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has issued a long statement on Telegram, praising his country’s military capabilities.
“In the same way that its [Iran’s] drones strike the US and the Zionist murderers like lightning, its valiant navy is also ready to inflict new bitter defeats on its enemies,” he said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
