The standoff over the Strait of Hormuz escalated again Saturday as Iran reversed its reopening of the crucial waterway and fired on ships attempting to pass, in retaliation after the United States pressed ahead with its blockade of Iranian ports.
The strait is closed until the U.S. blockade is lifted, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said Saturday night, warning that “no vessel should make any movement from its anchorage in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, and approaching the Strait of Hormuz will be considered as cooperation with the enemy” and be targeted.
Meanwhile, New attacks on the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes, threatened to deepen the global energy crisis and push the countries into renewed conflict as the war entered its eighth week.
During an attack on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. “Everything suggests that responsibility for this attack lies with Hezbollah,” Macron wrote on social media. The UNIFIL peacekeeping force also blamed Hezbollah.
Hezbollah denied involvement.
Pakistan’s foreign minister said fighting between Israel and Hezbollah had been a key sticking point in U.S.-Iran talks, and the declaration of a ceasefire in Lebanon was seen as a boost to efforts for an Iran agreement.
It was unclear to what extent Hezbollah would abide by a truce it didn’t play a role in negotiating, especially with Israeli troops still occupying a stretch of southern Lebanon.
In Beirut, displaced families began moving toward southern Lebanon and the capital’s southern suburbs despite warnings by officials not to return home until it was clear whether the ceasefire would hold.
The Iran war has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states.
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