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The recent strike poses a threat to efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
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Tehran has struck a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz as countries try to reopen the oil route.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attacked a Singapore-flagged commercial vessel with a drone on Thursday, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News. According to an advisory from the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre, the ship’s bridge was damaged after it was struck on its starboard side off the coast of Dahit, Oman, though no casualties or environmental impacts were reported.
The attack poses an immediate challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to reopen the critical shipping corridor, which normally carries one-fifth of the world’s oil.
Meanwhile, U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio has dismissed concerns raised by the UAE over an Iranian toll on the Strait of Hormuz as “semantics.”
“You can call it a toll, you can call it a fee, at the end of the day it’s all semantics,” Rubio said during a visit to Bahrain, where he is meeting the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Washington has sought to reassure the region that no country, including Iran, will be allowed to charge tolls for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Gulf allies on Thursday that any deal with Iran would take their interests into account, as he wrapped up a Middle East trip aimed at winning over regional partners with deep reservations about the preliminary accord.
Speaking at a meeting of Gulf Arab foreign ministers in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Rubio said Washington was seeking an enduring peace with long-time foe Iran that would not come at the expense of the security of allies in the oil-rich region, many of whom see the deal as too soft after coming under Iranian attack during the conflict.
Iran fought two of the world’s most powerful armies, the US and Israel, during the conflict and took effective control of the vital Strait of Hormuz, heavily disrupting oil flows and rattling global energy markets and the wider economy.
He told reporters that Gulf allies shared some very serious concerns and that they wanted to be informed of every step of the peace accord, which includes provisions on Hormuz.
In a joint statement later on Thursday, the US and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said a lasting peace would mean addressing Iran’s ballistic missiles, drones and support for proxy groups.
They also backed “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the Strait of Hormuz without “any tolls, fees, or attempts to assert control.”
If Iran threatens or blocks ships in the strait, “then we’re going to have a problem,” Rubio said, having earlier told ministers that “no country on Earth has the right to charge for the use of international waterways” and that fees for shipping would never be part of any deal.
Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States would soon buy wheat, soybeans and corn from American farmers using Iranian assets that have been frozen under US sanctions.
“We have a new market coming up, and that’s called The Lovely Country of Iran. It’s a beautiful place. Would anybody like to go there? They’re having a hard time with food and we’re going to be taking some of their money and we’ll spend it and we’re going to be buying wheat, soybeans, and corn, a lot of it, and that process is going to be starting soon. It’s going to be big,” he said.
Eight more South Korean vessels have exited the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea’s Oceans Ministry said today.
A total of five South Korean-operated ships remained in the area, with 47 crew members on board as of 9am Seoul time on Friday, the ministry said.
The ministry declined to disclose details on the vessels, citing requests from shippers and crew members.
The UN International Maritime Organization paused its operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday after a vessel reported an attack, reigniting concerns about whether a preliminary deal to end the Iran war would hold.
The IMO decided “to temporarily pause its implementation in order to reconfirm that the necessary safety guarantees continue to be in place for the ships on our evacuation list and all those in the region”, secretary general Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement.
It said the ship involved in the suspected attack was not part of its evacuation programme.
The cargo ship said it was hit close to Oman by a projectile, according to British naval agency UKMTO, hours after Tehran warned vessels against taking routes that it had not approved.
Two US officials told Reuters Iran had fired on the ship, while Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which Tehran established to manage requests for ships to travel through the strait, said vessels outside routes it had set would not be guaranteed safe passage.
“Consequences arising from passage through unauthorized routes shall be the responsibility of the owner, operator, and vessel commander,” the Iranian authority said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attacked a Singapore-flagged commercial vessel with a drone on Thursday, damaging the ship’s bridge off the coast of Oman, CBS News reported. Though no casualties were reported, the strike directly challenges ongoing international efforts to reopen the critical shipping corridor.
In response, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization has temporarily paused its evacuation plan for stranded ships to reconfirm safety guarantees. The attack creates a sudden setback just a week after a U.S.-Iran agreement briefly boosted maritime traffic back toward normal levels.
President Donald Trump was more enthusiastic about buying “good maple trees” for the White House than discussing his recently-launched war with Iran when visited by two reporters in March, a new book claims.
In the latest advanced extract from Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the authors recount an hour-long Oval Office meeting with the president in the early weeks of the conflict, a moment in which the Strait of Hormuz was newly-shutttered, driving up global oil prices.
Trump had attacked Haberman on Truth Social three days before the sitdown as a”SLEAZEBAG writer” but the pair found him in a buoyant mood.
Joe Sommerlad writes:
Iran and India discussed strengthening energy cooperation and trade during a meeting between their oil ministers on the sidelines of a BRICS energy ministers’ gathering in India, the Iranian oil ministry’s news outlet Shana reported on Thursday.
Last week, Iran and the US signed an interim deal, after which Washington issued a temporary license for the export of Iranian energy products.
India has historically been an important buyer of Iranian crude, but suspended imports in 2019 following the re-imposition of US sanctions on the export of Iranian oil.
An Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed two people on Thursday, medical and security sources said.
It is the second consecutive day such an event occurred.
In a similar strike on Wednesday killed at least two people despite a ceasefire, Lebanese security and medical sources told the Reuters news agency.
Two U.S. soldiers wounded in the war with Iran have accused the Pentagon of downplaying the extent of their injuries, according to a report.
CBS News has conducted interviews with Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman and Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks, both of whom were injured when an Iranian drone hit their base at Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait on March 1.
The attack, which saw six soldiers killed, was part of the retaliatory strikes against U.S. and Israeli allies in the Gulf launched by Tehran in response to the launch of Operation Epic Fury a day earlier.
Bearman, 57, was left with shrapnel wounds and also suffered concussion, hearing and vision loss and damage to his lungs, according to medical records reviewed by the network, but the U.S. Army classified his condition only as “not seriously injured.”
Joe Sommerlad reports:
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