Alastair Crooke | 9 July 2026
When the US Navy, in co-ordination with Qatar and Oman, tried to slip a convoy of four vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, via Omani waters, on Tuesday night — rather than pass via Iran’s officially approved route — Trump may have imagined (or been told) that with the massive funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei under way, that Iran would not react as the US Navy attempted to force open an American corridor. Trump however, misread the Iranian jibe — Hormuz is its ‘atomic weapon’. Iran will not relinquish it.
Trump insists — in clear contradiction to the terms set out in paragraph five of the MoU — that Iran has no right to interfere with any ship trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran nonetheless is acting within the terms of the agreed de-escalation framework, and has warned repeatedly that it would strike any vessel circumventing the Iranian control mechanism.
Iran responded directly to Trump’s challenge to Iranian control of the Strait by striking two vessels with missiles and a third with an armed drone. A fourth Qatari-owned tanker, laden with liquefied natural gas, was set ablaze, forcing its crew to abandon the stricken vessel.
These Iranian ripostes provoked Trump to order American air strikes against Iranian targets; to reimpose sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports; and to revoke the MoU framework he had signed with what he called the “Iranian scum” — thus ending the ceasefire. “We hit them hard last night”, Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara. “We will probably hit them hard again tonight”.
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