WASHINGTON/CAIRO: Iran questioned the seriousness of American diplomacy on Saturday in the wake of renewed naval clashes in the Gulf, while keeping Washington waiting for a response to its latest negotiating position.
US President Donald Trump had said on Friday that he was expecting Iran’s response to Washington’s latest proposal for a deal to extend a fragile truce and launch peace talks—“supposedly tonight”. While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said on Friday that Washington expected a response within hours.
But if Iran did send Pakistani mediators a response, there was no public sign of it, and Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called into question the reliability of the US leadership in a call with his Turkish counterpart.
“The recent escalation of tensions by American forces in the Persian Gulf and their numerous actions in violating the ceasefire have added to suspicions about the motivation and seriousness of the American side in the path of diplomacy,” he said, according to an Iranian account of the call published by the ISNA news agency. In an incident on Friday, a US fighter jet fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers that Washington accused of challenging its naval blockade of Iran’s ports.
A state of relative calm prevailed around the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, after days of sporadic flare-ups. An Iranian military official told local media the country’s navy had responded “to American terrorism with strikes” and that “the clashes have now ceased”.
The latest incident came after a previous flare-up overnight Thursday to Friday in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital international sea lane that Iran is seeking to control to extract tolls from foreign vessels and wield economic leverage over the US and its allies.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated on Friday that it was “unacceptable” for Tehran to control the key oil route.
Washington has sent Iran, via Pakistani mediators, a proposal to extend the truce in the Gulf to allow for talks on a final settlement of the conflict launched 10 weeks ago with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Friday that the proposal was still “under review”, according to ISNA. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, met with US Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Friday and discussed the Pakistani-led efforts to broker a permanent peace. Iran has attacked sites in Qatar during the war, pointing to the wealthy emirate’s role as the host of a major US air base.
Meanwhile, satellite images have shown that an oil slick is spreading off the coast of Iran’s Kharg Island, a key oil export terminal for the Islamic republic. It was not immediately clear what had caused the apparent spill, which was off the island’s west coast and appeared to cover more than 20 square miles (52 square kilometres), according to global monitor Orbital EOS. A UK-based non-governmental organisation, the Conflict and Environment Observatory, told AFP that by Saturday the slick was “much reduced”, and may have been caused by leaking oil infrastructure.
Kharg Island is at the heart of Iran’s oil export industry, a lynchpin of its battered economy, and lies in the Gulf far north of the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
Following the start of the war on February 28, Iran largely closed the strait, throwing global markets into turmoil and driving up oil prices. The US later imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports in response. On Sunday, Trump announced a US naval operation designed to reopen the strait to commercial shipping, only to abandon it on Tuesday in favour of a return to negotiations.
Saudi sources told AFP the kingdom had refused permission for the US military to use its bases and airspace for the Hormuz operation, with one saying Riyadh “felt it would just escalate the situation and would not work”. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he hoped that the Iran conflict would end as soon as possible but that if it did not then everyone would lose out.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his United Arab Emirates counterpart on Friday that US-Iran talks needed to be supported to prevent a resumption of hostilities in the Middle East. “The Russian side emphasised the need to focus on supporting the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the USA,” a foreign ministry statement said of Lavrov’s telephone conversation with Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The statement said Russia did not want “to jeopardise the prospects for stabilisation by resuming hostilities.”
The UK will send a destroyer to the Middle East ahead of any international mission to help protect shipping in the key Strait of Hormuz, its defence ministry said Saturday. “The pre-positioning of HMS Dragon is part of prudent planning that will ensure that the UK is ready, as part of a multinational coalition jointly led by the UK and France, to secure the strait, when conditions allow,” a ministry spokesperson told AFP.
Britain and France said last month that military plans to secure the Strait of Hormuz were coming together and would succeed in restoring trade flows through the vital passage.
The MoD said deploying HMS Dragon would strengthen the confidence of commercial shipping and support mine clearance efforts once hostilities end.
At a two-day meeting in London in April involving more than 44 countries, military planners discussed the practicalities of a multinational mission led by the UK and France to protect navigation in the key waterway. Some 40 countries are understood to have agreed to participate in plans for the mission to free up navigation in Hormuz. With US President Donald Trump due to begin a long-awaited visit to China next week, there has been mounting pressure to draw a line under the conflict, which has thrown energy markets into turmoil and posed a growing threat to the world economy. Tehran has largely blocked non-Iranian shipping through the strait since the war began with US-Israeli airstrikes across Iran on February 28. The US imposed a blockade on Iranian vessels last month. But a CIA assessment indicated Iran would not suffer severe economic pressure from a US blockade of Iranian ports for about another four months, according to a US official familiar with the matter, raising questions over Trump’s leverage over Tehran in a conflict that has been unpopular with voters and US allies.
A senior intelligence official characterised as false the “claims” about the CIA analysis, which was first reported by the Washington Post.
The US has found little international support in the conflict. After meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Rubio questioned why Italy and other allies were not backing Washington’s efforts to reopen the strait, warning of a dangerous precedent if Tehran were allowed to control an international waterway. Speaking in Stockholm, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European countries shared the aim of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and said they were working to bridge differences with Washington. While pursuing diplomacy, the US also ratcheted up sanctions to pressure Iran. Days before Trump travels to China to meet President Xi Jinping, the US Treasury on Friday announced sanctions against 10 individuals and companies, including several in China and Hong Kong, for aiding efforts by Iran’s military to secure weapons and raw materials used to build Tehran’s Shahed drones.
Treasury said in a statement it was prepared to act against any foreign company supporting illicit Iranian commerce and could impose secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions including those connected to China’s independent oil refineries.
Bahrain’s interior ministry said on Saturday that the country’s security services had dismantled an organisation accused of links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and arrested 41 of its suspected members.
British police have charged two men with religiously aggravated harassment offences after they were alleged to have travelled to a Jewish area of north London to film antisemitic social media videos. The two men, Adam Bedoui, 20, and Abdelkader Amir Bousloub, 21, were due to appear at Thames Magistrates’ Court, a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said on Saturday.
President Donald Trump mocked Iran as well as former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama on social media on Saturday. He posted multiple memes that clowned Iran’s drones for being useless against the US military.
One post showed Iranian “Drones Dropping Like Butterflies” into the ocean. One side of the picture showed a big blue butterfly falling into the water, while the other side showed a wrecked drone crashing down. While another image of a US battleship showed shooting drones out of the sky. The likely AI-generated picture showed massive explosions and was captioned “Bye Bye, Drones.”
Another picture showed 159 Iranian ships sailing with giant flags on the open sea; on the other side of the meme showed those same vessels destroyed and sitting at the bottom of the ocean.
Rubio and Witkoff met on Saturday in Miami with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani as part of efforts to reach a deal to end war in iran, Axios reported. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) on Saturday threatened to target US sites in the region and “enemy ships” if its tankers come under fire, Iranian media reported. “Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack on one of the American centres in the region and enemy ships,” it said, a day after US attacks against two Iranian tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who nearly discovered it, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter including U.S. officials.
Israel built the installation, which housed special forces and served as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force, with the knowledge of the US just before the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the newspaper said. It also included search-and-rescue teams positioned to assist any downed Israeli pilots, the Journal said.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. There was no immediate response from the Israeli prime minister’s office to a Reuters request for comment.
The base was almost discovered in early March after Iraqi state media said a local shepherd reported unusual military activity, including helicopter movements in the area.
Iraqi troops were dispatched to investigate, but Israeli forces used airstrikes to keep them at a distance and prevent the site from being discovered, the paper said, citing one of the sources.
The Journal cited a complaint filed with the United Nations later in March in which Iraq said the attack involved foreign forces and airstrikes and attributed it to the US. The WSJ cited a person familiar with the matter as saying the United States was not involved in the attack.
