Iran asserted control over the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, saying it had warned three ships not to pass through the waterway, a day after President Trump said he would extend a U.S. deadline for Tehran to open the strait.
As Iran moved to formalize tolls for vessels passing through the strait, the war continued unabated on Friday, with new attacks reported in Iran, Israel, Lebanon and Kuwait. Iranian state media said that airstrikes in the country had hit a uranium processing plant, a nuclear research center, two steel plants and another industrial complex.
The Israeli military said it had struck a heavy-water plant in the central Iranian city of Arak, describing it as linked to potential plutonium production. Heavy water is used as a reactor coolant. The Israeli military said the strike had targeted construction at the site, which was damaged in last year’s 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, promised a forceful response to the strikes, which he said had violated Mr. Trump’s promise not to attack Iranian energy infrastructure. “Iran will exact HEAVY price for Israeli crimes,” he wrote on social media.
Arak has been a concern and a target for Israeli and American officials for more than a decade. The worry is that Iran could reprocess plutonium left over in a reactor there and use it to produce a weapon fueled by the element. But the core of the reactor was removed in 2016 under the nuclear deal Iran struck with the Obama administration and European nations.
The Pentagon has moved battalions of ground troops to the Middle East in recent days, spurring speculation about pending operations against Iran, particularly to seize control of Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub. Mr. Trump has said he has no plans to send ground troops into Iran, but he has been far from ironclad in his statements.
Speaking to reporters in Paris on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States did not need to send ground forces into Iran and the war could be over within weeks, not months.
“We can achieve all our objectives without deploying ground troops,” Mr. Rubio said after attending a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations.
Despite a month of Israeli and American attacks aimed at crippling Iran’s ability to project military power across the region, Tehran has not stopped its retaliatory strikes. The Israeli military said it had detected volleys from Iran on Thursday and on Friday. There were no immediate reports of damage.
Kuwait said its main commercial port, Shuwaikh, was struck on Friday by a “hostile drone” that caused damage but no injuries. Iranian missiles and drones have repeatedly attacked Gulf States, hitting hotels, energy infrastructure and other sites.
In Lebanon, the Israeli military issued more evacuation warnings for Beirut’s densely populated southern outskirts, a Hezbollah stronghold, which was followed hours later by airstrikes. The roar of Israeli fighter jets could be heard above the city, putting residents on alert after days of relative calm.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, said on Friday that it had targeted an Israeli tank in the southern Lebanese town of Bayada, about five miles from the Israeli border. Israeli troops have appeared to make fairly rapid advances into southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours as part of their ground invasion, though they were still operating a few miles from the Israeli border. Photos and videos seen by The New York Times showed Israeli troops outside the perimeter of the headquarters for U.N. peacekeepers in Naqoura.
Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has choked off oil, gas and fertilizer shipments, straining economies around the world. Mr. Trump has threatened to attack Iran’s power plants if it does not fully reopen the strait. His twice-extended deadline is now April 6.
Two of the ships that Iran warned not to pass through the strait on Friday were Chinese-owned, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking database, which showed that those vessels had turned around. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in a message carried by state media, said a Hong Kong company owned the third ship.
It was not clear whether the Guards knew what companies owned the vessels. Iran said this week that “nonhostile” ships could pass safely through the strait. For much of the war, Iran has allowed some friendly countries, including China, to send their ships through the waterway.
Iran’s push to formalize tolls on vessels passing through the strait was moving through the country’s Parliament, where lawmakers said the fees would assert the country’s “sovereignty, control and oversight” over the passage, according to reports by Fars and Tasnim, two semiofficial news agencies affiliated with Iran’s security forces. Since the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran began Feb. 28, Iran has charged some fees under what appears to be an informal and selectively applied system.
Speaking after the G7 meeting in Paris, Mr. Rubio called the Iranian toll plan “illegal” and said it was in the interests of other countries to help open the strait to commercial ship traffic.
“If those counties are impacted by it, all we’ve said is, ‘You guys need to do something about it,’” he said.
The Trump administration has sent Iran a 15-point plan, diplomats said, demanding what would amount to a complete shutdown of its nuclear program and sharp limits on the reach and size of its missile arsenal.
Mr. Rubio said on Friday that Iran had not formally responded to the plan and had not clarified if any of its officials might take part in negotiations to end the war. Iran has said it would not end the conflict unless the United States paid war reparations and recognized its “exercise of sovereignty” over Strait of Hormuz.
Reporting was contributed by Mark Landler, Peter Eavis, Johnatan Reiss, David E. Sanger, Shirin Hakim and Leily Nikounazar.
Euan Ward is a Times reporter covering Lebanon and Syria. He is based in Beirut.
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