Iranian leaders insisted on Thursday that they could not allow the free flow of commercial transit in the Strait of Hormuz because the United States has continued to enforce a blockade on Iranian ships using the maritime byway, indicating continued Iranian intransigence hampering attempts at peace talks.
The commentary followed the initial conclusion, and then extension of, a two-week ceasefire initiated by the United States against Iran to create space for talks to end the current conflict. The conflict began on February 28, when President Donald Trump announced that the Pentagon had launched Operation Epic Fury to degrade Iran’s ability to use its missile and drone arsenal against America and its allies. The operation, alongside joint Israeli attacks, resulted in the killing of dozens of senior Iranian officials, most prominently Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader.”
President Trump stated on Tuesday that he would extend the ceasefire for the near future to allow what remains of Iran’s regime to regroup and put together a coherent negotiating position, suggesting that the various factions in Tehran were competing for power. The ceasefire would not include an end to the U.S. military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for ships transiting to and from Iran.
The refusal to allow free transit in the Strait of Hormuz came from Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who reportedly wrote in a statement on social media that Iran would not move to allow commercial traffic unless the American blockade was lifted.
“A complete ceasefire has meaning only when it is not violated with the naval blockade and the hostage-taking of the world’s economy and when the Israeli regime’s warmongering stops on all fronts,” he wrote, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
“Reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the official underlined, is not possible with a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” he reportedly asserted.
In a more conciliatory statement, the figurehead president of Iran, Masoud Pezehskian, claimed that Iran was open to talks but only after it received several major concessions on issues that would presumably be part of any forthcoming talks.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has welcomed dialogue and agreement and continues to do so,” he said in a statement published in English to the social media site Twitter, contrasting strikingly with the language out of other branches of the remaining Iranian regime.
“Breach of commitments, blockade and threats are main obstacles to genuine negotiations. World sees your endless hypocritical rhetoric and contradiction between claims and actions,” he added.
Pezeshkian did not go on to list any allegedly breached “commitments” by the United States or Israel.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the most powerful branch of the Iranian military and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, also issued a statement on Thursday, this time reiterating its violent, threatening tone against those Pezeshkian claimed to be open to negotiating with. The IRGC warned that disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which it has reportedly littered with dangerous mines, could significantly harm undersea telecommunications infrastructure.
“Simultaneous damage to several major cables, whether through accidents or deliberate action, could trigger severe outages across the Persian Gulf,” the IRGC warned, according to the Iran-friendly outlet Al Mayadeen. The outlet noted that any explosion harming major cables in the strait could disproportionately harm the interests of India “due to its reliance on these connections for internet services, cloud computing, and digital payments.”
While India depends on traffic in the strait for many of its imports and exports, it had managed to avoid many of the consequences of the war as its ships have reportedly been allowed safe passage. India is both an ally of Iran’s through the anti-American BRICS coalition and a friendly trade and diplomacy partner with America. The IRGC did, however, claim to intercept an India-bound ship in the strait overnight on Thursday.
The IRGC announced that it had seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz, identified as the MSC Francesca, a Panamanian-flagged ship, and the Epaminondas of Liberia, the first known such ship captures by the IRGC since Operation Epic Freedom began. U.S. authorities dismissed the seizures as unrelated to peace talks, as they did not impact the United States and argued that they did not inspire global confidence in the Iranian military’s abilities.
“They don’t have control over the strait. This is piracy that we are seeing on display. And the naval blockade that the United States has imposed continues to be incredibly effective,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. “And, to be clear, the blockade is on ships going to and from Iranian ports. And the point of this is the economic leverage that we maintain over Iran now. While there’s a ceasefire with respect to the military and kinetic strikes, Operation Economic Fury continues, and the crux of that is this naval blockade.”
The potential for sea mines to create chaos in the Strait of Hormuz does appear to be an issue of greater concern in the White House, however, as President Donald Trump announced orders on Thursday to shoot boats dropping mines there.
“I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be (Their naval ships are ALL, 159 of them, at the bottom of the sea!), that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. There is to be no hesitation,” he wrote on his website, Truth Social.