US, Iran assert control over Strait amid fire exchanges

Dubai, July 14:

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

The latest exchange was sparked by an Iranian attack on a container ship on Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has asserted control over the critical waterway for international oil and gas since the United States and Israel started the war on Feb. 28.

Iran says it has the right to manage traffic through the strait and potentially charge fees in accordance with an interim peace deal reached last month. The US and others dispute that, citing international law on freedom of navigation, and the American military has tried to establish an alternative route outside of Iranian control.

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 Sunday, but that Iranian negotiators had called back later and suggested changes. He did not elaborate.

Iran and the US are nearly halfway through the 60-day period in which they were supposed to negotiate a permanent end to the war and an agreement on Iran’s disputed nuclear program. Instead, a series of attacks over the strait have raised fears of a return to all-out war and further disruption to the global economy.

Oil prices jumped nearly 5% on Monday before falling back. US benchmark crude, which had risen to nearly $120 a barrel at the height of the war, was trading at around $72.92. Markets were mixed.

The US military said it struck dozens of sites in the strikes Monday, including air defense systems, radar sites, missile and drone equipment, and small boats. It said Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for the strait to be open, as it was before the war. “Freedom of navigation has to be respected,” she said.

Mohammed Mokhber, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, wrote that Tehran would fight for the strait.
“We defend it so that in the future, for the passage of our ships, we are not forced to pay tribute to the enemy!” he wrote on X.

“Retreating from this vital matter has no place in the mind of any friend of Iran.”
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a key power center in the country’s theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal, said the Strait of Hormuz is “our territory, and we will not allow a rogue and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference in it.”

Missile alert sirens sounded three times Monday in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Kuwait said it was intercepting hostile fire. There was no immediate word on damage in either country.

In Jordan, the kingdom’s military said it shot down four Iranian missiles in an incident that “resulted in zero casualties or material damage.” Jordan also hosts US military forces and aircraft.

In Iran, authorities reported attacks in Hormozgan, Khuzestan and Markazi provinces and said at least two people were killed, according to state-run IRNA news agency. Semiofficial Iranian media also reported strikes in the eastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, which is on a coast of the Gulf of Oman.

The attacks continued hours after the US ended its strikes – again raising the possibility of Gulf Arab states retaliating against Iran. There were unclaimed attacks on Iran on Thursday.