Strait talk turns straitjacket: Diplomacy stuck, ships struck, in Hormuz

The TOI correspondent from Washington: The US-Iran standoff in the Hormuz Strait remains unresolved 72-hours before the end of a two-week ceasefire after Tehran, angered by US president Donald Trump’s social media grandstanding portraying it as having caved in completely to his demands including surrendering its uranium stockpile, announced it was again shutting down the waterway.

Just hours after both sides appeared to be moving towards a resolution, Iran, citing what it saw as bogus victory claims by Trump and various US transgressions including a selective American blockade of Hormuz, said it is also going to regain control of shipping movement in the strait.




“As long as the enemy intends to disrupt vessel traffic or impose methods like naval blockades, the Islamic Republic of Iran will consider that a ceasefire violation and prevent the conditional, limited opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Iran’s supreme national security council in a setback to what Trump projected on Friday as an imminent deal.

Following the announcement, two two Indian vessels, including a super tanker carrying 2 million barrels of oil, had to reverse course from the strait following reports of gunfire from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. New Delhi lodged a strong protest. Both sides are now in hair-trigger posture in the straits, threatening to prevent vessels the other side is trying to shepherd through.

The stand-off follows a series of Trump announcements on social media on Friday that virtually constituted a victory dance. Among other claims, Trump said Iran had agreed to give up its “nuclear dust,” the two countries would work together to extricate enriched uranium back to the US and remove mines from the Hormuz Straits, and there would be no monetary rewards for Iran in return for what was virtually portrayed as an unconditional surrender.

Iran pushed back on the claims, insisting it would never give up its uranium, calling it a sovereign national asset that would not be transferred out of the country under any circumstances. Far from being beaten into submission as Trump appeared to suggest on Friday, Teheran indicated that it would stand up for its rights even if it meant another round of punitive American strikes, which the US president has said will follow if there is no deal by the time the ceasefire ends of Wednesday.

Asked if he will extend the ceasefire, Trump said "I don't know. Maybe I won't extend it … Unfortunately, we'll have to start dropping bombs again."

Still he tried to put a positive spin on the developments, suggesting the Iranians were pushing back to signal to their domestic audience that they were not rolling over, and there is perhaps an Iranian faction more amenable to a deal than the hardline leadership.

“We have very good conversations going on. It's working out very well. They got a little cute, as they have been doing for 47 years,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from a domestic political event in Arizona, amid growing disquiet in Republican circles about entering another distant quagmire.

The US president is now battling on several fronts, including a fight he has picked with the Pope and with Nato, forcing him back to the political bully pulpit in the US, where he faces a headwind ahead of the November midterm elections. He even did some bible-thumping on Friday, recording a passage from the Old Testament for a national bible reading event to mark the 250th anniversary of the formation of "one nation under God,” although the founding fathers did not explicitly designate it as a Christian country.

Trump has a sketchy relationship with the scriptures, mocked once for holding a Bible upside down in front of a church, and commercialising the book while barely being able to recite any verses. Earlier this week, his "war secretary" Pete Hegseth, parodied as an alcoholic by his critics, was roundly ridiculed for quoting a prayer during a Pentagon Christian worship service that mirrored a monologue delivered in the movie Pulp Fiction.



All this has not endeared the MAGA boss to his Christian conservative base, but never one to take a step back, the US president is confident he will take a victory lap this week, having drafted Pakistan in the task of getting Iran to back down. He has thrown out the bait of visiting Islamabad himself if Pakistan can get Iran to agree to a deal, but so far Iran is not biting.