LONDON — With a U.S. naval blockade taking effect on Monday, oil prices again surging past $100 a barrel and a fragile ceasefire set to expire in nine days, the United States and Iran began the week locked in a standoff after historic peace negotiations in Pakistan collapsed over the weekend.
Washington, Tehran and anxious capitals around the world are not sure how a cascade of urgent questions will resolve: Does the fighting resume when the truce runs out on April 22? What will U.S. Navy operations in the Strait of Hormuz actually entail? And is there any conceivable path to an agreement on an Iranian nuclear program that has now survived not only two decades of international diplomacy seeking to curtail it, but also more than five weeks of the most intensive military assault ever launched against Iranian territory?
Financial markets were not reassured. Oil futures jumped above $103 a barrel as traders reacted to President Donald Trump’s announcement that U.S. warships would block traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. But just how tight a grip the Navy would impose remained unclear.
Trump, in a Truth Social post Sunday, declared a sweeping embargo on “any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.” But U.S. Central Command implied a more limited blockade, saying it would begin stopping all traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports starting at 10 a.m. Eastern time Monday — early evening in the Persian Gulf.
Analysts warn the blockade could face serious military obstacles; the narrow strait forces U.S. warships into a confined channel where Iran’s sea mines, shore-based missiles and swarms of cheap drones could neutralize American military advantages. The strategic logic, however, is straightforward: Cutting off Iran’s oil exports would sever access to the hard currency keeping its war economy afloat.
The economic blowback could be double-edged: With roughly 7 million barrels of crude and 4 million barrels of refined product already trapped in the Gulf, blocking Iranian oil threatens to push global prices even higher. The strait is also a choke point for other supply-chain commodities, including aluminum, helium and fertilizer.
The blockade is Trump’s latest expression of frustration with Iran’s continued stranglehold on the shipping lane. The president’s public views have vacillated, from claiming in a national address April 1 that the Strait of Hormuz didn’t matter, to threatening to obliterate Iran’s “entire civilization” if didn’t allow ships to pass, to now imposing his own blockade on the already blockaded passage.
Iran said it would strike back hard at the U.S. blockade.
“If Iran’s ports are threatened, NO PORT in the region will be safe,” the Iranian military central command said in a post on X Monday.
But some experts said the U.S. blockade could effectively push Iran and its oil-dependent allies into a more conciliatory position and was preferable to deploying ground troops to disrupt Iranian exports by occupying key facilities, such as the processing and shipment facilities on Iran’s Kharg Island.
“The blockade always made more sense than seizing Kharg Island,” longtime U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross said in a social media post. “It stops Iran’s exports, its revenues, is a counterpoint to their closing the Straits. They may attack Gulf oil facilities, but it puts greater pressure on Iran. It also puts great pressure on China to pressure Iran.”
What comes next, most analysts agree, is more uncertainty. Pakistan, whose mediators were still meeting with the Iranian delegation hours after Vice President JD Vance’s departure from Islamabad, has pledged to keep bridging efforts alive. Both sides have left just enough diplomatic daylight to suggest that back-channel talks will continue even as military pressure escalates.
“The likelier scenario is not immediate war, but a volatile period of pressure, signaling and last-minute attempts to prevent a wider conflagration,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told the Associated Press.
So far, neither side shows signs of budging from core positions, particularly on the issue of Iran’s determination to maintain the nuclear research that it says is intended for legal civilian applications but that Israel and the U.S. insist is destined to provide Tehran with a nuclear weapon.
“The meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not,” Trump wrote in a post Sunday.
Despite repeated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium — enough for as many as 10 weapons — remain stored in tunnels that the bombing left at least partially intact, their exact location now unknown even to international inspectors.
George reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.
The post With U.S set to impose naval blockade, Iran warns it will strike back appeared first on Washington Post.
