US president Donald Trump has claimed that Iran wants to make a deal but that he will not come to any agreement that allows Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Speaking at the White House on Monday evening, Trump said talks over the weekend had hit a roadblock related to nuclear issues.
He said Iran had “called this morning” and that “they’d like to make a deal very badly.”
“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”
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Throughout the conflict, which began with a US-Israeli attack on February 28th, the US president has made frequent claims that Tehran had been in direct contact, desperate for an agreement, but none of those claims has ever been substantiated.
He made the comments as a US blockade of ships using Iranian ports in the Gulf took effect on Monday, turning the six-week-old conflict between the US-Israeli coalition and Iran into a test of economic endurance.
US central command said the blockade applies to any ships entering or departing Iranian ports or coastal areas, while ships using non-Iranian ports would not be impeded.
Trump claimed that 34 ships had passed through the strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf, on Sunday.
Iran warned that ordinary US residents would pay the cost for Trump’s latest move in the shape of higher petrol prices, and also vowed that if the US went back to bombing, the Tehran regime was ready to retaliate.
For his part, Trump said any Iranian attack boats approaching the US flotilla in the region would be “immediately eliminated”.
It appeared on Monday that US naval forces were going to try to enforce the blockade east of the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman, beyond easy Iranian missile and drone range.
It remained unclear how US central command intends to stop any oil tanker attempting to break the blockade. A missile attack could cause an environmental disaster, leaving open the possibility that US forces could seek to board and take control of any vessel not obeying US instructions.
UK Maritime Trade Operations issued an advisory to seafarers to “maintain heightened situational awareness” pending updates giving details on how they were expected to navigate through the new conditions in the region.
Trump issued a warning that any Iranian “fast attack ships” would be “immediately eliminated” if they approached US vessels enforcing the blockade, with “the same system of kill” as the US has used to sink nearly 50 small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 168 people who it has claimed without evidence were involved in narco-trafficking.
The US president ordered the blockade following US-Iranian talks in Islamabad that ended after 21 hours without agreement.
The tactic is aimed at strangling the heavily oil-dependent Iranian economy, and forcing Tehran to meet US demands to reopen the Hormuz strait to ships from the ports of Gulf allies, and to accept a complete ban on uranium enrichment.
The Iranian regime has insisted that it still have effective control of the Hormuz strait and can determine which ships will be allowed to pass, and has pointed out that the US blockade will result in higher oil prices, which have already climbed back to above $100 a barrel since the diplomatic breakdown in Islamabad.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker who also led his country’s delegation in Islamabad, told Americans in a post on X on Sunday to “enjoy the current pump figures”, taunting Washington with historical US political sensitivity about petrol prices.
“With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 gas,” Ghalibaf added. The current average petrol price in the US is $4.13 a gallon, up from $2.98 before the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28th.
The president conceded on Sunday that petrol prices could be the same as they are now or more when the nation votes in congressional elections, telling Fox News they could go “a little bit higher”.
The Iranian embassy in Thailand posted a mock election poster on Monday, emblazoned with the words “Trump: $20.28 a gallon”, under the question: “Are you ready folks?” – The Guardian/Additional reporting: Reuters
