Iran seizes two ships in show of force as bid to revive peace talks founders

▸ Tehran refuses to sub­mit ▸ Trump extends cease­fire ▸ US block­ade per­sists ▸ Oil rises above $100

^{ANDREW ENGLAND AND ALICE HANCOCK — LONDON}

Iran seized two mer­chant ships in the Strait of Hor­muz and struck a third yes­ter­day, just hours after Don­ald Trump exten­ded his cease­fire with Tehran fol­low­ing the break­down of a second round of peace talks in Pakistan.

The attacks by the Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guard Corps navy under­lined Iran’s hard­line stance and refusal to sub­mit to Amer­ican pres­sure as medi­at­ors struggle to revive talks to end the war.

Oil prices climbed back above the $100 threshold after the three con­tainer ships were attacked, with Brent crude rising more than 3 per cent to nearly $102 a bar­rel for the first time in more than a week.

The IRGC claimed it had escor­ted two of the ves­sels into Ira­nian ter­rit­orial waters, indic­at­ing the escal­a­tion was in retali­ation for the US seizure of an Ira­nian ship as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion block­ades the Islamic repub­lic’s ports. If con­firmed they would mark the first seizures by Tehran since the start of the war nearly eight weeks ago.

Iran’s for­eign min­is­ter told his Italian coun­ter­part that the situ­ation in the strait was a “dir­ect res­ult of the law­break­ing” of the US. Abbas Aragh­chi said Tehran had taken meas­ures in accord­ance with “inter­na­tional law” in order to pro­tect its secur­ity, accord­ing to a readout of yes­ter­day’s call.

The Inter­na­tional Mari­time Organ­iz­a­tion con­demned the Ira­nian seizures as “unac­cept­able” and cri­ti­cised the com­pan­ies that risked the transit.

Arsenio Domin­guez, the UN body’s sec­ret­ary-gen­eral, said: “The situ­ation in the region remains extremely volat­ile. I can­not under­stand why com­pan­ies would take risks and endanger sea­farers’ lives.”

Both the MSC Francesca and the Epaminon­das nav­ig­ated the strait on Tues­day night without their GPS track­ing on, accord­ing to mari­time data. The Francesca is owned by the Geneva­headquartered MSC Group, while the Epaminon­das was chartered by the com­pany. Ira­nian media sep­ar­ately claimed the third ship attacked was the MSC-owned Euphoria at anchor in the mouth of the Strait of Hor­muz, where it meets the Gulf of Oman. MSC declined to com­ment on the attacks.

The Strait of Hor­muz remains all but closed, with ships in effect requir­ing per­mis­sion from both the Ira­ni­ans and the US to pass through the choke­point.

Pakistani efforts to host a second round of nego­ti­ations in Islamabad broke down on Tues­day after Tehran refused to attend as long as the US block­ade on its ports was in force. Wash­ing­ton respon­ded by can­cel­ling US vice­pres­id­ent JD Vance’s plans to travel to Pakistan as head of the US del­eg­a­tion.

Trump said he would extend the cease­fire, which was due to expire yes­ter­day, but insisted the naval block­ade would hold. He set no time­frame for the truce, other than to say until “such time as their pro­posal is sub­mit­ted, and dis­cus­sions are con­cluded, one way or the other”. He later claimed Iran was “col­lapsing fin­an­cially” and los­ing $500mn a day because of his naval block­ade.

Vali Nasr, a former US offi­cial and pro­fessor at Johns Hop­kins Uni­versity, said the view in Iran was that the “US is pre­par­ing for war and this is all theatre”.

“If there’s going to be talks they want a US com­mit­ment to lift the block­ade, in exchange for which they might have relaxed restric­tions on the strait,” he said.