President Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. military attacked and seized custody of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that had tried to maneuver around the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, hours after he and an Iranian official exchanged accusations of cease-fire violations in the Strait of Hormuz.
A U.S. Navy destroyer intercepted the cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman and “gave them fair warning to stop,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media. “The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom.” He added that the ship, the Touska, was under U.S. sanctions and that the United States was “seeing what’s on board!”
The attack on the Iranian ship, which was not immediately confirmed by Iran, is sure to raise tensions in the already escalating standoff over the strait.
Earlier on Sunday, Mr. Trump accused Iran of firing on ships passing through the strait in “a total violation of our ceasefire agreement,” while Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said it was the U.S. blockade that was a violation of the cease-fire.
The blockade was an unlawful act that amounted to a “war crime and crime against humanity” because it was “deliberately inflicting collective punishment” on the Iranian people, Mr. Baqaei said.
Mr. Trump said in his social media post that the ships attacked by Iran were from France and Britain, though the two vessels that the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organization reported hit on Saturday appeared to be Indian-flagged, according to a statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
The U.K.M.T.O. said that gun boats belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly fired on one vessel, a tanker, without radio warning. In the other incident, the organization reported, a container ship was “hit by an unknown projectile,” causing damage to some containers. India’s external affairs ministry said it had summoned Iran’s ambassador over the incidents.
Those ships and several others reversed course, according to shipping analysts. The U.K.M.T.O. had not reported any further incidents in the region as of Sunday evening local time.
At least two tankers trying to cross the strait on Sunday, one sailing under Botswana’s flag and the other under Angola’s, were forced by Iran’s military to change course, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.
Mr. Trump’s accusation on Sunday came just 48 hours after he declared that according to Iran, the “STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE.” He left in place the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.
But Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had said that after the announcement of a cease-fire in Lebanon, passage through the strait would be “completely open” only on a route that runs close to Iran’s coastline and only “for the remaining period of the ceasefire.” It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Araghchi was referring to the cease-fire in Iran or the cease-fire in Lebanon.
A day after Mr. Araghchi’s statement, Iran’s military declared that it would retake “strict” control over the strait until Mr. Trump ended the U.S. blockade. Mr. Trump responded with a threat, saying on Sunday that American representatives were on their way to Islamabad for future negotiations and that the United States would attack every power plant and bridge in Iran if it did not accept a deal.
Tasnim reported on Sunday that Iranian negotiators had said no negotiations would take place unless the United States ended its blockade.
Anushka Patil is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news around the world.
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