A ship sails off the coast of Ajman, United Arab Emirates, on Friday.
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President Trump on Tuesday said the United States will not impose fees on ships in exchange for helping them transit the Strait of Hormuz safely, reversing course a day after the surprise announcement that there would be a 20% cargo charge.
“Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” he wrote online. No further details on the investments have been provided.
But Trump said the U.S. would still reinstate its blockade on Iran as planned.
The U.S. military said it would begin a blockade of ships entering or exiting Iranian ports at 4 p.m. ET.
Trump’s change of course comes as the U.S. and Iran have intensified attacks, leaving their ceasefire in tatters and threatening a return to all-out war in the region.
The U.S. launched another wave of strikes on Iran late Monday and early Tuesday local time. U.S. Central Command said it struck Iranian defense systems, missile and drone sites and maritime capabilities to “degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Tuesday that it had struck “two non-compliant” supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a statement in Iranian state media. Iran also said it launched missiles and drones against U.S. military infrastructure in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and U.S. military outposts in Jordan.
The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said two of its tankers were targeted by Iranian cruise missiles while transiting the shipping lane of the Strait of Hormuz in Omani waters, killing one person. Bahrain authorities reported that sirens were sounded and urged citizens to head to safe places. Jordanian state media said the country’s air defenses intercepted four Iranian missiles early Tuesday as they entered its airspace.
The escalation comes as the U.S. and Iran reach a halfway mark in the 60-day ceasefire agreed in June, when the two sides signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding to work out the terms of a final deal and open the Strait of Hormuz.
During a NATO summit in Turkey last week, President Trump declared the ceasefire “over,” but didn’t rule out further talks.
The truce all but collapsed over the weekend as Iran attacked a commercial vessel moving through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday and the U.S. retaliated with strikes in response.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a news conference Monday that Iran was in touch with mediators, including Oman, Qatar and Pakistan, saying their role was to de-escalate the situation.
But the status of negotiations with the U.S. was not clear.
Control over the Strait of Hormuz
Control over the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as the key point of contention between the U.S. and Iran. The deadlock over the waterway, through which roughly 20% of the world’s energy supplies typically move, has disrupted global trade and increased fuel prices around the world.
Even before the latest round of strikes, just 22 ships crossed the strait on July 9 — compared to 147 crossings the day before the war began in February, according to Kpler, a firm that tracks global commodities and shipping.
Mourners wave the Iranian flag on top of a building during the funeral procession for Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and members of his family before he is buried at the Shrine of Imam Reza, Iran’s most revered place of worship, in Mashhad on Thursday.
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Washington sees the Strait of Hormuz as an international waterway, but after the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran has asserted its control over the strait and has insisted ships get permission and follow approved routes. Iran has been attacking ships if they did not comply with its orders and at times has announced the strait was closed.
Trump pushed back on Monday and said the United States would not allow Iranian ships to move through the strait. “We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving,” he said in a post online.
CENTCOM said mariners approaching the Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz should “contact U.S. naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16.” It said, “Additional information will be provided to commercial mariners through a formal notice.”
The U.S. will be known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” Trump wrote online.
He also said the U.S. would charge other countries’ ships a 20% cargo fee as reimbursement for the U.S. doing “the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”
Until that point, the U.S. had said there should not be any tolls or fees on shipping through the strait. In June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law.”
On Tuesday, Trump said he changed his mind after feedback from Gulf Arab countries.
“So I put it out yesterday. I thought it was good. I was called by different people, different countries, kings and emirs, and all of the people that we all know, and we all love, and they’ve been frankly, they’ve been very strong partners. And they said we’d love to do it a different way,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“You have Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, and you know primarily, and then others. They, I spoke to all of them, and they would love to invest more money in the United States at record amounts, and that would be very acceptable,” he said. “And this way, there’s no fee.”
Different interpretations of the memorandum of understanding
Critics of the interim deal signed last month between Iran and the United States blame the lack of details in the agreement for the confusion over the management of the strait that led to renewed fighting.
Michael Singh, a Mideast specialist and the managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says that one such example is Paragraph 5 of the memorandum of understanding, which stipulates that Iran would make arrangements using its “best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vehicles.” Singh says the Trump administration and Iranian leaders differ in their interpretation of that commitment, with Iran considering it controls the strait.
“Here, I think the wording, you know, hews much more to what Iran wanted to get out of that understanding because it seems to place responsibility for the straits in Iran’s hands rather than reinforcing that this is an international waterway,” Singh adds.
Prior to its announcement of the reinstatement of its blockade of Iranian ships over the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. had urged ships to use a southern route that hugs the coast of Oman. Iran said this violated the memorandum of understanding.
Iran’s Parliament speaker and negotiator with the U.S., Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted an image of the preliminary deal on social media, highlighting the section of Point 5 that says “Iran will make arrangements.” He wrote: “The era of one-sided deals is OVER.”
The U.S. has also accused Iran of breaching the memorandum.
“What was supposed to be a bridge from war to diplomacy has instead become another battlefield, with both sides using force to try to impose their own reading of the agreement’s ambiguous terms,” the International Crisis Group, a think tank that advocates to prevent war, said in a newsletter on the issue Tuesday.
The foreign minister of Qatar — a mediator in the conflict — had said ceasefire talks would continue after the multiday funeral last week for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The ayatollah was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes at the start of the war.
Current Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a statement on Saturday, through state media, vowing to avenge the death of his father and other Iranian officials killed by the U.S. and Israel.
NPR’s Jackie Northam, Hadeel Al-Shalchi and Deepa Shivaram contributed reporting.
