After a diplomatic team led by United States Vice-President JD Vance tried, and failed, to reach a negotiated agreement to end the war with Iran on Saturday, President Donald Trump had to decide his next move.
That came on Sunday morning, in a series of Truth Social posts.
The US will impose a naval blockade of Iran, he wrote. “No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” he wrote.
He also said that the US would continue clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz to ensure a safe passage for allied shipping. The US military, he added, was “locked and loaded” and prepared to resume attacks against Iran at an “appropriate moment”.
He went on to say that while progress had been made in the 20-hour negotiations in Islamabad, Iran would not meet the US demand that it abandon its nuclear ambitions.
That view was contradicted somewhat by a US official familiar with Vance’s negotiations, who spelled out a much longer list of disagreements – including on Iran’s control of Hormuz and its support for regional proxies, like the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
While Trump’s latest posts didn’t have the apocalyptic bluster of last week’s threat to end Iranian civilisation, they pose a number of new challenges – and risks – for the American side.
Will mine-clearing activities place American naval vessels at greater risk of Iranian attacks? How would the US determine who paid Iran a toll? Will the US use force on foreign-flagged ships that ignore the blockade? How will nations that depend on Iranian oil, like China, respond? Will the move, intended to choke off Iran’s primary income stream, drive the price of oil to even higher levels?
There are no clear answers.
Later on Sunday, the US military Central Command announced that the naval blockade would stop all ships travelling to or from Iranian ports – a different set of conditions than in Trump’s earlier proposed action.
“I don’t understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Sunday.
On CBS’ Face the Nation programme, Republican congressman Mike Turner of Ohio, who until last year chaired the House Intelligence Committee, said the blockade was a means to force a resolution to the situation in Hormuz.
“The president, by saying we’re not just going to let them decide who gets through, is certainly calling all of our allies and everyone to the table,” he said. “This needs to be addressed.”
Last week, before Iran and the US agreed to a two-week ceasefire and face-to-face negotiations, Trump had found himself in a difficult situation.