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\n This US Navy handout photograph released on April 17, 2026, by US Central Command Public Affairs shows USS Abraham Lincoln conducting blockade operations in the Arabian Sea on April 16, 2026. The US president said he was sending a delegation to Pakistan on April 20 for negotiations with Iran, while renewing his threats to destroy the country’s vital infrastructure if it didn’t agree a deal. AFP PHOTO \/ US NAVY \/ US CENTRAL COMMAND PUBLIC AFFAIRS\n <\/p>\n
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By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tehran reversed that decision and fired on several vessels Saturday after President Donald Trump said a US Navy blockade of Iranian ports would remain in effect. On Sunday, Trump said the US attacked and forcibly seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that allegedly tried to get around the blockade. Iran\u2019s joint military command vowed to respond.<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s higher prices wiped out much of the declines seen Friday, signaling renewed doubts about how soon ships will again transport the vast amounts oil the world gets from the Middle East.<\/p>\n Contracts for West Texas Intermediate and Brent jumped sharply Monday, days before the end of a two-week ceasefire.<\/p>\n The blockade of Iranian ports has been a significant sticking point in negotiations between the two countries, and state broadcaster IRIB cited Iranian sources as saying \u201cthere are currently no plans to participate in the next round of Iran-US talks\u201d in Pakistan.<\/p>\n The Fars and Tasnim news agencies had earlier cited anonymous sources as saying \u201cthe overall atmosphere cannot be assessed as very positive,\u201d adding that lifting the US blockade was a precondition for negotiations.<\/p>\n WTI jumped more than 7 percent at one point, while Brent piled on more than 6 percent.<\/p>\n There has so far been only a single, 21-hour negotiating session held in Islamabad on April 11 that ended inconclusively, though groundwork for fresh talks continued afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it,\u201d Trump said in a social media post Sunday, while also renewing his threats against Iran\u2019s infrastructure if a deal is not made.<\/p>\n But Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards warned that any attempt to pass through the strait without permission \u201cwill be considered cooperation with the enemy, and the offending vessel will be targeted.\u201d Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said the blockade was \u201ca violation\u201d of the ceasefire.<\/p>\n A spokesman for the military\u2019s central command center, Khatam Al-Anbiya, accused the United States of having \u201cviolated the ceasefire\u201d that has been in place since April 8.<\/p>\n US President Donald Trump posted Sunday on Truth Social that after the Iranian vessel, Touska, ignored warnings to stop, the guided missile destroyer USS Spruance \u201cstopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, US Marines have custody of the vessel,\u201d the US president added, \u201cand are seeing what\u2019s on board!\u201d The incident comes with tensions high in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for the world\u2019s oil and liquefied natural gas, which has been virtually closed since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran seven weeks ago.<\/p>\n Iran briefly reopened the strait on Friday in recognition of an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in Lebanon, but closed it again the following day in response to the United States maintaining its blockade on ships traveling to and from Iranian ports.<\/p>\n In an earlier post on Sunday, Trump accused Tehran of violating the ceasefire, which expires Wednesday, by launching attacks on Saturday in the vital shipping lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OIL prices surged Monday after a US destroyer fired on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to evade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[356,4015,34,3852,39,825,27419,21726,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-75040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-persian-gulf","8":"tag-crude","9":"tag-escalation","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-on","12":"tag-persian-gulf","13":"tag-prices","14":"tag-shoot","15":"tag-up","16":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116438174818857215","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}