US Iran War News Highlights: 2 Indian ships come under fire in Strait of Hormuz after Iran reasserts control

Iran reversed its decision to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and fired on a tanker attempting to pass the waterway on Saturday. It also warned that it would continue to block transit through the strait as long as the US blockade of Iranian ports remained in effect.

Confusion over the critical chokepoint threatened to deepen the energy crisis roiling the global economy and push the two countries toward renewed conflict, even as mediators expressed confidence a new deal was within reach.

The Israeli military ⁠said ​on ​Sunday that one ​soldier ⁠was killed ‌during combat ⁠in ⁠southern ⁠Lebanon, adding ‌that nine ​soldiers ‌were ‌wounded, ​including ​one ​who ​was severely injured.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing the deputy director of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, says the country’s airspace is to be reopened with flights from east to west to be established gradually.

It said the reopening of Iran’s airspace will be carried out in four stages. In the first phase, the airspace will be opened for transit flights, followed by flights from eastern airports of the country. In the third phase, flights from Mehrabad and Imam Khomeini airports will be permitted followed by flights from other western airports.

Iranian officials say they have reversed the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and reimposed restrictions on the vital shipping lane after the US said it would not end its blockade of Iranian ports.

A UK maritime agency reported that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ships had fired at a tanker as it attempted to pass through the strait on Saturday. Reuters reported an Indian-flagged vessel carrying crude oil had also been attacked while in the waterway.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya joint military command said on Saturday that Tehran had restored the strait to its “previous status” and was now “under strict management and control by the armed forces”.

Iran's top negotiator said recent talks with the US had made progress but gaps remained over nuclear issues and the Strait of Hormuz, while President Donald Trump cited "very good conversations" with Tehran despite warning against "blackmail" over the key shipping channel.

Neither side offered any specifics about the state of negotiations on Saturday, days before a fragile ceasefire in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is set to expire.

The war, now in its eighth week, has killed thousands, spread to Israeli attacks in Lebanon and sent oil prices surging because of the de facto closure of the strait, which before the war carried one-fifth of ⁠the world's ​oil shipments.

Donald Trump convened a White House Situation Room meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the renewed crisis around the strait of Hormuz and negotiations with Iran, according to reporting from Axios.

A senior US official told Axios that unless there is a breakthrough in peace talks, it appears that the war could reopen within days. There is still no firm date for negotiations to resume this weekend, despite Trump’s hopes to end the conflict before the ceasefire expires on Tuesday.

The official told Axios that JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and Scott Bessent, among other senior government officials, were present at today’s meeting.

Iran is not prepared to hold direct talks with the United States at this stage, a senior official said, pointing to what he called excessive demands from Washington, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Speaking in Antalya, Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said discussions are continuing through messages, but key issues remain unresolved.

“We are still not there yet to move on to an actual meeting because there are issues that the Americans have not yet abandoned their maximalist position,” he told the AP. Read more

Israeli forces on Saturday began demolishing homes in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil and other border towns where Israeli troops are present, Lebanese state media reported.

Bint Jbeil was the scene of intense fighting with Hezbollah before the recently agreed 10-day truce, and has long been a symbolic and strategic flashpoint in confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah.

“The Israeli enemy is repeating its house detonating operations in the town of Bint Jbeil,” Lebanon’s state-run National news agency (NNA) said.

Bint Jbeil, which is about 5km north of the Israeli border, saw heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah for days before the truce went into force at midnight on Thursday.

The UN’s secretary-general has condemned the attack on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which killed a French soldier and injured three others.

“I extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends [and] colleagues of the fallen peacekeeper, and wish a full & fast recovery to the injured peacekeepers,” Antonio Guterres posted on X.

He noted that today’s attack was the third incident resulting in the deaths of peacekeepers serving in Lebanon in recent weeks.

The Strait of Hormuz has been announced as open to commercial vessels, but we are dealing with a very complex situation, not only when it comes to the strait itself but also when it comes to the entirety of the negotiations ahead.

Iran is using the strait as a pressure point and a form of leverage.

Iran had previously said that reopening it would be conditioned on a ceasefire in Lebanon.

US President Donald Trump said he is “just doing the thing that’s right” on Iran, stressing that preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is his top priority. “The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and that supersedes everything else,” Trump said.

The ship tracking site MarineTraffic said a cruise liner, reportedly sailing without passengers, has successfully sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, the first passenger vessel to make it through since the war began.

According to MarineTraffic, the Malta-flagged Celestyal Discovery had been docked in Dubai for nearly 47 days, having first arrived in early March.

MarineTraffic said that the ship crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Friday and is currently heading towards Muscat, Oman, with an estimated arrival of later today.

Donald Trump has also said he may end the ceasefire with Iran unless a long-term deal to end the war is agreed by Wednesday.

The president told reporters on Air Force One, cited by Reuters : "Maybe I won’t extend it, but the blockade (on Iranian ports) is going to remain. So you have a blockade, and unfortunately we have to start dropping bombs again.”

The US president has posted on Truth Social to say that his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is “very happy that the Strait of Hormuz is open and/or rapidly opening.”

Trump also looked ahead to his upcoming visit to China, saying that his meeting with Xi will be “a special one and, potentially, Historic.”

“I look forward to being with President Xi — Much will be accomplished!,” he added.

While US stocks raced to another record after Iran announced it was reopening the strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping.

The S+P 500 leaped 1.2% after Iran’s move.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up as many as 1,100 points before paring its gain and ended with a jump of about 870 points, or 1.8%, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.5%.

Oil prices fell 9%, the AP reports.

A freer flow of oil could take pressure off prices not only for petrol but also for groceries and all sorts of other products.

Dow, S&P, or Nasdaq, all three key indicators have been gaining momentum, not only on Friday, but all week, growing by 3, 4, and 6 percent, respectively.

Clearly, traders on Wall Street are trying to move beyond this crisis.

There were worst-case scenarios or predictions of what could have transpired in the Strait of Hormuz – perhaps it being closed for several more weeks, or even months.

Now traders are getting indications that that will not be the case, with the announcement that it is potentially reopening, [which] is why you’re seeing this newfound optimism.

US forces will pursue Iran-linked ships in waters well outside the Middle East, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday, specifically mentioning the Indo-Pacific.

The Pacific region, especially anchorages in and around the Strait of Malacca, is home to some of the largest concentrations of the dark fleet tankers that move illegal or sanctioned oil from countries like Iran, according to Lloydslist.com.

“We are also conducting similar maritime interdiction actions and activities in the Pacific AOR (area of responsibility) against those ships that left that area before we began the blockade,” Caine said.

Donald Trump’s administration has issued a waiver permitting countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products at sea for about a month, seeking to control global energy prices that have shot higher during the war on Iran.

The US Treasury department allowed purchases of the oil loaded on vessels as of Friday until 16 May, an extension of an original 30-day waiver that expired on 11 April, according to a document posted to the department’s website.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister has called for the UN to effectively respond to acts of “aggression” towards his country, Iran’s IRNA news agency reports.

During a meeting with the UN’s top peace-building official, Rosemary Di Carlo, Saeed Khatibzadeh said the attacks on Iran were a “continued blatant violation of international laws and rights.”

US President Donald Trump and Iran’s foreign minister said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open to commercial vessels. Iran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi said the strategic waterway “is declared completely open,” in line with the new ceasefire in Lebanon, and Trump said the strait is “ready for full passage.”

However, Trump added that the US naval blockade on Iranian ships and ports “will remain in full force” until Iran reaches a deal with Washington to end the war.

Iran has already unambiguously dismissed the notion that it agreed to transfer its enriched uranium to the US. But Trump has reiterated the claim during a rally in Arizona.

“We’re going to get it by going in with Iran, with lots of excavators … We’re going to get it. We’re going to take it back home to the US,” Trump said.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has welcomed the ceasefire in Lebanon, but she said more work is needed to build on the fragile gains and enable those displaced by Israeli attacks to return home.

“This is an important start, but more progress is needed,” Shaheen said. “I urge the sides to work together to rebuff Iranian influence and allow all displaced residents to return home.”

The UK and France are slated to co-chair a meeting later today of nearly 40 countries – but not the US – focused on the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the global supply shock due to US-Israel war on Iran.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to say reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a “global responsibility”, the UK’s Press Association reports.

Reuters news agency earlier reported that the meeting aims to reaffirm full diplomatic support for full freedom of navigation through the strait.

The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) says it could take about two years for the Middle East to recover energy output lost during the war on Iran.

Fatih Birol told Switzerland’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper that recovery times would differ across the region, with some countries taking longer than others.

“In Iraq, for example, it will take much longer than in Saudi Arabia,” Birol said.

He added that the IEA estimates it would take “approximately two years overall” for production to return to pre-war levels.

It will take about two years to recover the energy output lost in the Middle East from the conflict there, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, was quoted as saying on Friday ⁠in ​an interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper.

"That will vary from country to country. In Iraq, for example, it will take much longer ​than in ​Saudi Arabia. However, we estimate ⁠it will take approximately two years overall to reach pre-war levels again," ‌Birol told the Swiss newspaper.

Birol added that the market was underestimating the consequences of a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Shipments of oil and gas that were already en route to their destinations ⁠before the ⁠war in Iran began have now arrived, mitigating the impact of shortages, ⁠he ‌said.

Yair Lapid has slammed the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel announced by US President Trump earlier.

“Not for the first time, all the promises of this government are crashing against the ground of reality. The confrontation in Lebanon can only end in one way: the permanent removal of the threat to the northern settlements,” Lapid said in a post on X.

“In this government, it will no longer happen; we will do it in the next government,” he said.

The UK and France will chair a meeting with allies later today to discuss joint efforts to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran has effectively closed the critical waterway off Iran's coast in response to US-Israeli strikes, while the US has started its own blockade on Iranian ports, all of which have led to a surge in global energy prices.

Around 40 countries are expected to join this afternoon's meeting, Keir Starmer's office said, adding that the leaders will "focus on supporting the fragile ceasefire in the region and in ensuring shipping routes are reopened and secured through the Strait for the long term".

Starmer is expected to tell the meeting that "the unconditional and immediate reopening" of the strait "is a global responsibility", Downing Street said.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Donald Trump, told Fox News that he does not trust the Lebanese Armed Forces with the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Graham said that a change in military leadership in Lebanon was necessary to ensure the security of the region.

“I do not trust the Lebanese military to disarm Hezbollah,” Graham said, calling for the commander of the military to be replaced.

He further asserted that there will be “no peace deal in Lebanon until there’s a credible pathway to disarm Hezbollah”.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports that Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has welcomed the announcement of the ceasefire in Lebanon, describing the move as a significant development in preventing further escalation across the region.

According to the SANA report, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasised Syria’s longstanding support for efforts aimed at preserving Lebanon’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as protecting the security of its people.