Iran stepped up its rhetoric against the US on Sunday, a day after it said it had re-established control over the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump confirmed that peace talks with Iran are ongoing, while warning against trying to blackmail Tehran.
Iran’s parliament speaker and top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said talks are continuing with the US and Israel to end the war, but his country is ready to restart the conflict and warned the US against using a naval blockade against its ships in the strait.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, “It is not that we think that we are negotiating, that is why the armed forces are not prepared.” Said in televised comments According to a report by Iranian state media late Saturday night. “Rather, just as people are on the streets, so are our armed forces.”
Ghalibaf also reiterated Iran’s intentions to restrict traffic through the strait, a key energy chokepoint.
He said, “It is impossible for others to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but not for us. If the US does not drop the blockade, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will definitely be restricted.”
After this Trump announced the blockade on April 12 complaining Tehran has not agreed to reopen the strait, one of its conditions for agreeing to the fragile two-week ceasefire currently in effect.
gunboat diplomacy
Two gunboats of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired a shot on a tanker passing through the strait, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said Saturday. It said the tanker and crew were safe, without identifying the ship or its destination.
At least two other ships reported coming under fire while trying to transit the waterway, shipping sources told Reuters.
Confusion over the status of the strait has left ship operators in a state of disarray.
Video footage from ship-tracking firm Several tankers and cargo ships attempted to exit the waterway on Friday but returned, Kepler showed.
Oil prices fell more than 10% on Friday to below $90 a barrel on hopes that energy supplies from the region would restart. Before the war about a fifth of the world’s crude oil supply passed through the strait. The closure of the sea route linking the Persian Gulf to global energy markets has caused the largest oil supply disruption in history.
India summoned Iran’s ambassador after an Indian-flagged ship carrying crude oil was attacked in Mumbai while trying to cross the strait, Reuters reports.
At a White House event on Saturday. Trump declined to answer reporters’ questions about Iran but said, “We’re having a very good conversation.”
He said Iran “got a little cute”, referring to the Strait of Hormuz, later adding, “They wanted to close the Strait again.”
“They can’t blackmail us,” Trump said.
nuclear rights
Meanwhile, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian was quoted as saying that the US cannot deprive Iran of its rights to a nuclear programme.
“Trump says Iran can’t use its nuclear rights, but doesn’t say for what crime. Who is he to deny a country its rights?”. Reuters quoted Pezeshkian as saying via the Iranian Student News Agency.
In an interview with The Associated Press on the margins of a diplomacy forum in Turkey on Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh rejected Trump’s claims, saying his country would not hand over its enriched uranium to the United States.
“I can tell you that no enriched material will be sent to the United States,” Khatibzadeh said. “This is a non-starter and I can assure you that while we are prepared to address any concerns you have, we will not accept things that are non-starters.”
Trump said on Friday that Iran has agreed to hand over its enriched uranium reserves.
He also said the US would go to Iran and “bring back all the nuclear dust”, a reference to the 970 pounds (440 kg) of enriched uranium believed to be buried beneath nuclear sites badly damaged by US military strikes last year.
Peace talks between the US delegation led by the Vice President in Pakistani capital Islamabad JD Vance and Iranian negotiators led by Ghalibaf failed to reach an agreement last weekend.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said in a statement that Pakistan’s army chief presented the proposals to Iran during his recent visit to Tehran as a mediator and they are still under review.
What was in the proposals was not disclosed.
‘Excessive demands’
The council said Iran had not yet responded, but that further talks would require the US to “abandon excessive demands and adjust its requests to the realities on the ground.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said this on Friday social media: “In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, passage through the Strait of Hormuz is declared fully open for all commercial vessels for the remaining period of the ceasefire.”
However, the ships must pass through a “coordinated route” announced by Iran’s maritime authorities, Araghchi said. It is unclear whether Tehran will force ships to pay tolls to pass through the strait.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day ceasefire starting at 5 pm ET on Thursday. Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon against militant group Hezbollah, a close ally of Iran, has been another stumbling block in talks between Washington and Tehran.
— The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
