US moves to blockade Iran after peace talks break down
After U.S. talks with Iran to end their six-week-old war broke down Sunday following 21 hours of negotiations, the White House is once again ratcheting up pressure on the regime.
The U.S. Navy has been directed to put in place a blockade designed to force Iran to reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, while preventing Tehran from profiting from its closure, President Donald Trump announced after the failure of weekend discussions. The move is set to begin at 10 a.m. Washington time on Monday, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which runs U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
The blockade will be enforced “impartially against all vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports or coastal areas,” the command said. In theory, that language is meant to avoid the optics of a narrow squeeze on one country. Still, whether that “impartial” posture holds up in practice is the question traders, shipping firms, and regional militaries will be watching closely.
Officials have not ruled out returning to the peace table during the two-week ceasefire, which expires April 22. Vice President JD Vance—who was in Pakistan for the talks—said a major sticking point was that the U.S. does not “see a fundamental commitment of will” on Tehran’s part to give up pursuing nuclear weapons. “We hope that we will” in the days to come, he added. Iran, for its part, sounded defiant. Tehran blamed the U.S. for “excessive” demands, and its lead negotiator, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibef, said Washington had “failed to win Iran’s trust.”
Trump said on Sunday that Vance, along with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, have become “very friendly” with Iran’s top three negotiators. But Tehran was “unyielding” on the subject of retaining nuclear power, which Trump said he could not allow “in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people” leading the regime. The negotiations reportedly also centered on the U.S. seeking that Iran “hand over or sell” its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
For the moment, the only vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil usually flows—have been Iranian and Iranian-approved vessels, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Institute for the Study of War think tank. Trump said the blockade would involve interdicting any vessel that may have paid a toll to Iran to transit the strait. If it’s effective, the economic math is brutal: the blockade would cost Iran an estimated $435 million a day in lost imports and exports, according to Miad Maleki, a former senior Iran sanctions official at the Treasury Department who is now a senior adviser at the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
There’s also the on-the-water side of the plan, and that’s where the pace—and the uncertainty—can get messy. Over the weekend, two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Peterson and the USS Michael Murphy, crossed the strait to begin minesweeping operations, according to U.S. Central Command. Adm. Brad Cooper said the command would “share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce.” But mine clearance is difficult and time-consuming work, and the U.S. Navy’s capabilities on that front have lagged behind its other high-tech specialties. Some Gulf countries will also support mine-clearing efforts, Trump said, and several other nations reportedly will too, including Britain, which officials there said last month was drawing up plans to send minesweeping drones.
In the background, Iran’s strategy appears built for delay as much as deterrence. Tehran has used the threat of drone and missile barrages as well as a “limited number of mines” to declare a “hazardous area” throughout the strait—except for Iranian territorial waters, where Iran then imposes fees, according to the Institute for the Study of War report. At its narrowest, the strait is about 21 miles wide, and the territorial waters of Iran and Oman overlap across most of that area.
One small real-world detail captures the stakes: the metallic click of a clipboard when someone flips to a new chart is the kind of sound you might hear on a ship pulling into the region—because mine maps and updated coordinates matter when the clock is running. While the U.S. military has destroyed most of Iran’s larger naval vessels, the job of laying mines can be carried out by small speed boats that are easy to build and hide. By some estimates, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had hundreds of these small boats on hand before the war began.
Even if minesweeping succeeds, there’s another complication—compliance itself. Iran may not be able to find some of the mines it has put in the strait, which could complicate Tehran’s ability to fully reopen the waterway, The New York Times reported Friday. Analysts also point to a different problem: confusion about what the two-week ceasefire agreement entails. The Institute for the Study of War concluded that the lack of a public, mutually agreed-upon document establishing the ceasefire requirements makes adherence difficult to establish.
The Trump administration’s delegates left Pakistan over the weekend after making “our final and best offer,” Vance said Sunday. “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”