President Donald Trump has announced that the US is reinstating a naval blockade of Iranian ports. Additionally, a 20% charge will be imposed on all cargo shipped through the strategic Strait of Hormuz following escalating strikes between the two countries. Watch the full breakdown of the situation.
#IranWar #Trump #StraitOfHormuz #USIran #WorldNews #BreakingNews #Geopolitics
#IranWar #Trump #StraitOfHormuz #USIran #WorldNews #BreakingNews #Geopolitics
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00:04Hello, I'm Maryam Mashiri and this is the Iran War Today, our daily briefing bringing you up
00:10to date with all you need to know on the US-Israel war with Iran. Well, let's start with some
00:15of
00:16today's key developments now. Donald Trump says the US is taking over the Strait of Hormuz as
00:21tensions escalate between Washington and Tehran after a week of strikes. Iran warns it will not
00:28allow the US to interfere in management of the Strait as it targets US bases across the Gulf.
00:34All of this is affecting that vital waterway where shipping appears to have almost slowed to a
00:40standstill, while the renewed attacks push oil prices back up with the cost of petrol and diesel
00:46rising once again. Well, Donald Trump says the US is now reinstating its blockade
00:57of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, starting immediately. In a Truth Social post, he says the
01:03US will be the guardian of the vital waterway and there'll be a 20% charge on all cargo shipped
01:10through. But he doesn't explain how this would work. It comes after a week of escalating strikes
01:16between the US and Iran, putting their ceasefire under intense pressure. Well, speaking to Fox and
01:21friends this morning, President Trump said, we're taking over the Strait. Have a listen.
01:27We hit them very hard last night. Every time they send a drone, we hit them very hard.
01:31But we had a deal. What nobody knows, we had a deal. It was a done deal. And then they
01:36broke it.
01:36They always break it. We've had 10 deals with these people. And so we're just going to hit them very
01:41hard. And we're going to keep the Strait. And we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian
01:47of the Strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the Strait. And we should be reimbursed
01:52for that. Well, joining me now is our State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, who's
01:57in Washington, and Baron Abbasi from the BBC's Persian service. Tom, to you first. President Trump
02:03says the US is going to guard the Strait. How? Well, I mean, he obviously hasn't set out how
02:12they will do that. And every attempt that the US has made previously to control the Strait of Hormuz,
02:17or at least to create a system where you can get back to transit, the kind of pre-war levels
02:25of
02:25commercial ships going through there, has failed by the United States. There have been several
02:31different mechanisms which they tried to do this, but they simply haven't been able to reopen the
02:36Strait. What we've seen most recently is attempts by the US to help navigate ships, not by escorting
02:44them, but largely by communicating with them close to the coast of Oman, so as far away from the Iranian
02:51side in the Strait that you can get. And in those cases, when the US has tried to do that,
02:56we've seen
02:56the Iranians have attacked ships, which has been part of the general reason that we're seeing this
03:02escalation at the moment. So Mr. Trump saying they're going to control the Strait and charge a 20% fee,
03:08he
03:08says, presumably on the value of cargo on these ships, just seems totally implausible. The other thing that
03:15Mr. Trump has said is about reimposing the US naval blockade. That is very significant. Naval blockades are
03:22under international law, an act of war. So this is another rung on the ladder of escalation that is being
03:28announced by Mr. Trump today, CENTCOM, the US Central Command. So they expect to start reimposing the naval
03:34blockade later today. Now that is going to be a huge provocation as far as the Iranians are concerned. Getting
03:41rid of the naval blockade was one of their key ambitions that helped lead to this de-escalation in the
03:46form of that
03:47memorandum of understanding around a month ago or so. So that is going to really escalate the situation.
03:53It cuts at the heart of what the Iranian government wants and needs, which is money, reconstruction,
03:58access, the ability to sell its oil. And this is going to make that, again, harder for them. So I
04:05think
04:05we're seeing a real deterioration in the situation at the moment, at least in terms of what Mr. Trump is
04:11threatening, you know, whether all of that comes to pass on the ground or on the on the water as
04:18it
04:18is there. Of course, I think we'll have to wait and see. And Baron, how has Iran responded to that
04:24statement from Donald Trump?
04:28Response has been swift and defiant. Both political and military officials have reacted to comments by
04:35Donald Trump that the US will be the guardian of the Strait of Hormuz. A parliamentary spokesperson has
04:41tried to make fun of Donald Trump, saying that Iran is not looking for foreign workers to protect the
04:48Strait of Hormuz. And if Donald Trump is looking for a job as a security guard, he should look elsewhere.
04:55But the military has gone even further, saying that under no circumstances will it allow the US to
05:02interfere in the management of the Strait of Hormuz, as it put it. It accuses the US of disrupting the
05:09flow of
05:10oil through the water, saying that it is the US, not Iran, that is disrupting shipping through the
05:17Strait of Hormuz through its military intervention. And for Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is not just a
05:25bargaining tool. It's not a negotiating tool. It's a matter of strategic importance. It's a matter of
05:31national security and sovereignty. And bear in mind that the Strait was open before the war, but following the
05:38war, since then, Iran has realized that it is one of its last remaining sources of strategic leverage
05:46against the United States. And to give that hope would be politically and militarily unacceptable for
05:52Iran. It believes that the war has shown, has proved to the world that geography is on the side of
06:00the
06:00Islamic Republic and the global markets understand that as well. But at the same time, it does not want
06:06to return to an all out war with the United States. The foreign ministry spokesperson has said that
06:14it remains in contact with regional mediators, suggesting that it wants to keep negotiating.
06:20It doesn't want to return to war with the US, but it doesn't want to give that leverage up either.
06:27Baron and Tom, thank you very much, both of you.
06:31Well, this all comes as the US and Iran continue to exchange strikes. So how have countries across
06:37the region reacted to this latest escalation? Barbara Plett-Asher reports now from Jerusalem.
06:44Every time there's another wave of US strikes, it's the regional countries who pay the price.
06:49Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, all of them said that they intercepted incoming fire. And the Iranians said
06:54they were targeting US military facilities in these countries. They also said that they hit radar
07:00systems in Oman. Iran has been actually expanding the geographic reach of its retaliation. For many
07:06weeks, it had been focusing on Kuwait and Bahrain. But in the past week, it has fired at Jordan three
07:13times. And during the war, almost not at all. It's also fired at Oman two times. And that's very rare
07:19as well,
07:19because Oman has presented itself as the regional neutral mediator. Iran has also increased its
07:26threats against the Gulf. The Joint Military Command said today on Monday that any sort of cooperation
07:33with the US would be seen as an act of war. So of course, the Gulf countries, the Arab countries
07:39are frustrated and alarmed by this, because every time things escalate, that raises the spectre of a
07:46return to all-out war from which their economies are still struggling to recover. And it also upends
07:52efforts to try to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is, of course, crucial for getting their oil and gas
07:58out and exporting their oil and gas. As for Israel, the view here is that the Iranians are not going
08:04to
08:04attack Israel because that would intensify the war. And the Israelis don't think the Iranians want to do
08:11that. However, in the Israeli media, there have been comments that we do hope Iran makes that mistake
08:17because we want to be drawn back into the war. We want to finish, as they call it, the mission
08:21that they
08:23started. And that has been stopped by the US and Iran agreement. Well, the renewed exchange of attacks
08:30has brought shipping in the Strait of Hormuz waterway to a virtual standstill. And it's driven oil prices up
08:37again. A reminder, the Strait is a key route for global oil transport. So just how many ships have
08:43got through in the last 24 hours? Thomas Copeland from BBC Verify explains. President Trump says the
08:51US naval blockade of Iranian ports is back, and the US will become the guardian of the Strait of Hormuz.
08:57So how did we get here? Well, after a surge of strikes and counter strikes between US and Iran this
09:04weekend, this was the message from Iran on Saturday. The Strait will be closed until further notice,
09:10they said. No vessels allowed to pass. And then here's a sense of what the Strait looked like
09:16after that on Sunday, taken from the ship tracking platform Marine Traffic. Now using this data,
09:22plus analysis from maritime intelligence firm Kipler about ships which may have switched off their
09:26location trackers, we've identified just eight fuel tankers or cargo ships that passed through the
09:32Strait on Sunday. That's down from 34 last week. Then we heard from Iran's Persian Gulf Strait
09:39Authority. This is what they had to say. Passage through the Strait is currently not possible.
09:44And here's what we can see so far moving on marine traffic today. Just three vessels appear to have
09:50crossed the Strait, two heading out and one heading in. And the routes these vessels are taking, that's also
09:56really key. Nearly all of them appear to be traveling along this northern Iranian route rather than this
10:03southern route through Omani waters. That's the route recommended by the US. Now in all of this, the US
10:09is insisting that the Strait is open. Traffic is flowing, the US military posted yesterday. US forces are
10:15prepared to keep it that way, they added. And here's Donald Trump today. He says the Strait of Hormuz is
10:21open
10:22and that the US will stop Iran's ships or customers from entering or leaving. Now, away from all of this
10:28war of words, what's certain is that the numbers we're tracking here, eight ships per day, three ships
10:34per day, is a fraction of the 138 or so vessels that used to sail through this critical waterway every
10:42single day. So, where does all this leave the fragile ceasefire and what does it mean for talks going
10:49forward? Well, those are some of the most searched questions today. To help answer them,
10:54here's our security correspondent Frank Gardner. So, what's happening in the Gulf right now and
10:58specifically in the Strait of Hormuz is a very depressing return to the deeply unsatisfactory
11:05status quo where we were a few weeks ago before this so-called memorandum of understanding between the
11:11USA and Iran. And we're caught in a kind of loop, an escalatory cycle here, where one country is
11:23carrying out an attack in one form, whether it's on ships or on land, and there's retaliation by the
11:30other country and so on. Both sides, Iran and the US, want to get back to deal-making. It's not
11:38in their
11:38interest to have a state of war between them, but neither side is prepared to back down. The US is
11:44not prepared to allow Iran to have sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and dictate which route ships
11:50must take and exact some toll on those ships passing through their territorial waters. And Iran is not
11:59prepared to accept a return to the status quo where it was back in February before the war began. It
12:04wants
12:05to flex its muscles now because it's worked out that it can weaponize geography and exert control to
12:11some extent by threatening shipping. So it's a really uncomfortable situation. And meanwhile, the Gulf states
12:19Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE etc., they are really suffering from this now because they were just getting
12:26back to business as normal, starting to plan conferences and symposiums in their countries
12:31in the autumn when the heat of summer subsides. Those are now all in jeopardy because you can't
12:38stage a conference in a country if a big venue like a conference hall is going to get droned from
12:44just
12:45across the water in Iran. So there's going to be mounting pressure on Donald Trump to resolve this.
12:51The Iranians know this. That's why I think they're going to hang tough.
12:55Now, whether you are joining us on YouTube, TikTok, sounds, radio or TV, thank you for your time.
13:01That's all from the Iran war today.
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