WASHINGTON, April 12: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday the US Navy will “immediately” begin a blockade to stop ships from entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz, after US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan ended without an agreement.
Iran has demanded the right to collect tolls from vessels traveling through the strait, but Trump said no one who pays them will “have safe passage on the high seas.”
“They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran,” Trump said.
Earlier in the day, the United States and Iran ended 21 hours of face-to-face talks in Islamabad without reaching a deal, leaving the fate of the fragile, two-week ceasefire still unclear.
“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters.
The war that has killed thousands of people and shaken global markets has entered its seventh week.
The US delegation led by Vance and the Iranian delegation led by parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf had discussed how to advance a ceasefire already threatened by deep disagreements and Israel’s continued attacks against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday that his country is prepared to reach a deal that would ensure “lasting regional peace.”
Pezeshkian added that Iran’s national interests are a red line, according to a readout of the call carried by Iran’s state-media.
He criticised the US use of bases in Gulf countries to carry out strikes against Iran, while maintaining that Gulf countries are “brothers” and that Tehran is willing to cooperate with them to achieve regional security “without outside powers.”
Since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, it has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 2,020 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states, and caused lasting damage to infrastructure in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries.
Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz has largely cut off the Persian Gulf and its oil and gas exports from the global economy, sending energy prices soaring. (AP)
