Iran-US war live: Tehran strikes ship in Strait of Hormuz as countries try to reopen oil route – UK Times

Eight more South Korean vessels have exited the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea’s Oceans Ministry said today.

A total ⁠of five ​South ⁠Korean-operated ships ‌remained in the area, with 47 ‌crew members ‌on board as of ⁠9am Seoul time on Friday, the ministry said.

The ministry declined to ‌disclose details ​on the ‌vessels, citing ⁠requests from ⁠shippers and crew ‌members.

The UN International Maritime Organization paused its operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday after a vessel reported an attack, reigniting concerns about whether a preliminary deal to end ⁠the Iran war would hold.

The IMO decided “to temporarily pause its implementation in order to reconfirm that the necessary safety guarantees continue to be in place for the ships on our evacuation list and all those in the region”, secretary general Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement.

It said the ship involved in the suspected attack was not part of its evacuation programme.

The cargo ship said it was hit close to Oman by a projectile, according to British naval agency UKMTO, hours after Tehran warned vessels against taking routes that it had not approved.

Two US officials told Reuters Iran had fired on the ship, while Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which Tehran established to manage requests for ships to travel through the strait, said vessels outside routes it had set would not be guaranteed safe passage.

“Consequences arising from passage through unauthorized routes shall be the responsibility of the owner, operator, and vessel commander,” the Iranian authority ⁠said.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attacked a Singapore-flagged commercial vessel with a drone on Thursday, damaging the ship’s bridge off the coast of Oman, CBS News reported. Though no casualties were reported, the strike directly challenges ongoing international efforts to reopen the critical shipping corridor.

In response, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization has temporarily paused its evacuation plan for stranded ships to reconfirm safety guarantees. The attack creates a sudden setback just a week after a U.S.-Iran agreement briefly boosted maritime traffic back toward normal levels.

President Donald Trump was more enthusiastic about buying “good maple trees” for the White House than discussing his recently-launched war with Iran when visited by two reporters in March, a new book claims.

In the latest advanced extract from Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the authors recount an hour-long Oval Office meeting with the president in the early weeks of the conflict, a moment in which the Strait of Hormuz was newly-shutttered, driving up global oil prices.

Trump had attacked Haberman on Truth Social three days before the sitdown as a”SLEAZEBAG writer” but the pair found him in a buoyant mood.

Iran and India discussed strengthening energy cooperation and trade during a meeting between their oil ministers on the sidelines of a BRICS energy ministers’ gathering in India, the Iranian oil ministry’s news outlet Shana reported on Thursday.

Last week, Iran and the US signed an interim deal, after which Washington issued a temporary license for the export of Iranian energy products.

India has historically been an important buyer of Iranian crude, but suspended imports in 2019 following the re-imposition of US sanctions on the export of Iranian oil.

An Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed two people on Thursday, medical and security sources said.

It is the second consecutive day such an event occurred.

In a similar strike on Wednesday killed at least two people despite a ceasefire, Lebanese security and medical sources told the Reuters news agency.

Two U.S. soldiers wounded in the war with Iran have accused the Pentagon of downplaying the extent of their injuries, according to a report.

CBS News has conducted interviews with Chief Warrant Officer Rodney Bearman and Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks, both of whom were injured when an Iranian drone hit their base at Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait on March 1.

The attack, which saw six soldiers killed, was part of the retaliatory strikes against U.S. and Israeli allies in the Gulf launched by Tehran in response to the launch of Operation Epic Fury a day earlier.

Bearman, 57, was left with shrapnel wounds and also suffered concussion, hearing and vision loss and damage to his lungs, according to medical records reviewed by the network, but the U.S. Army classified his condition only as “not seriously injured.”

Senior Israeli and Lebanese officials denied that there had been any Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon on Thursday, after a US official said it had done so in a good faith gesture toward Lebanon’s government.

Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a US-backed proposal for Israeli forces to hand some of the territory they occupied in their war with Hezbollah to Lebanon’s military, in a possible step toward restoring Lebanese control in the south.

The “pilot zone” proposal has been part of the latest round of Israeli-Lebanese talks in Washington mediated by the US, which resumed even as they appeared to be eclipsed by Iran’s move to make Lebanon central to its own talks with Washington.

A US State Department official said that “Israel has already taken a concrete step by pulling back from a part of its buffer zone”. The so-called buffer zone is a vast area of southern Lebanon that Israeli forces are occupying north of the Israeli border.

The official described the move as “a significant demonstration of good faith toward Lebanon’s legitimate government.”

It is nearly four months since the US and Israel launched war on Iran – a decision which had a dramatic and devastating impact stretching almost every corner of the world.

From skyrocketing oil prices, rising costs of global commodities, and deepening levels of food insecurity and poverty, normal people have been paying the price for a war involving the world’s most advanced military and the two most powerful forces in the Middle East.

But a war that many believed would be short-lived – with Donald Trump repeatedly vowing it would end “soon” with a total victory – dragged on for days, weeks, and then months, inflicting spectacular damage not only on global finances, but on the US military’s reputation as an unassailable force.

The global impact of the Iran war ranges from jet fuel prices, to the price of food, to increases in household bills.

At the centre of the global impact was Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint through which one fifth of the world’s oil supply flowed during peacetime.