Blockade against blockade - when the president fires before he thinks

The peace talks in Islamabad have, as is known, failed. 21 hours. No result. JD Vance departed and said Iran had decided not to accept the American conditions. No American negotiator remained behind to continue talks at a lower level - neither with Iran nor with the Pakistani mediators. The White House confirmed this.

What followed did not take long.

Donald Trump posted that the U.S. Navy would from now on block all shipping traffic attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz - in both directions. Every ship that had paid Iran a transit fee should be intercepted on the high seas. And then the sentence that stands above everything: “Any Iranian who shoots at us or at peaceful ships will be blown to hell.”

Hours later, U.S. Central Command, known as CENTCOM, quietly walked it back. The blockade would apply only to ships heading to or leaving Iranian ports - not to all ships in the strait. Freedom of navigation for non-Iranian traffic would remain untouched, they said. Trump had spoken in the morning of a “complete blockade.” All or nothing. Until CENTCOM corrected the post, without calling it that. A complete blockade of the entire strait and a blockade of Iranian ports are two fundamentally different things. The former would mean that no ship at all could pass. The latter allows other traffic through. Trump had announced the former. CENTCOM implemented the latter.

Around twenty percent of the world’s oil normally flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Since the start of the war, Iran has largely choked off the passage - only its own ships and a few others were allowed through, possibly for a fee. On Saturday, the day before the blockade announcement, twelve ships crossed the strait - nine oil and gas tankers, three cargo ships. It was the highest number since the ceasefire was announced. Since the truce, about forty commercial vessels have passed through the strait in total - far below prewar levels, but a sign that something was moving. Trump’s announcement could end that within hours.

The oil price reacted immediately. Brent crude rose by more than seven percent to about 102 dollars per barrel. The American benchmark West Texas Intermediate climbed by more than eight percent to about 105 dollars. Since the beginning of the war, gasoline prices at American pumps have risen by 38 percent to an average of 4.13 dollars per gallon. Diesel stands at 5.66 dollars - an increase of 50 percent since the war began. Trump said the price increases had not been as bad as expected. He said he had told his economic advisers: “I’m sorry, but we have to take a little trip to Iran.” Asked whether prices could fall by the midterm elections, Trump said they could stay the same or rise slightly - and then began complaining about media coverage.

Iran responded without detours and with multiple voices at once.

Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of the Revolutionary Guard and now a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, wrote that Iran has “large, untapped levers” to counter any naval blockade. It would not be pressured by tweets and fantasy plans. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker, addressed American consumers directly: “Enjoy current fuel prices. With the so-called blockade, you will soon feel nostalgic for gasoline prices of four to five dollars.” Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to Khamenei and longtime Iranian foreign minister, wrote that the key to the strait lies “firmly in our hands.” The Revolutionary Guard declared that the strait would remain open for non-military vessels under “special arrangements” - but any military ship approaching would be considered a ceasefire violation and would face a “heavy response.”

Ghalibaf had previously taken a clear position on why the talks failed. Iran had entered the negotiations in good faith. The American team had failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation. He recalled that the United States had attacked Iran twice in the past twelve months in the middle of ongoing negotiations. Anyone who shoots twice while talking should not be surprised if the other side no longer opens its hands in the third meeting.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States, commented briefly on Vance’s departure from Islamabad: “The United States must learn that it cannot dictate terms to Iran. It is not too late to learn that. Not yet.” Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said an agreement would be possible if Washington abandoned its “maximalist approach” and respected the rights of the Iranian people. In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he described American totalitarianism as the primary obstacle. If the United States adhered to international legal norms, a solution would not be far away.

The conservative Iranian analyst Ali Gholhaki, who has close contacts with Iranian officials, said the United States had also refused to commit to ending Israeli bombardments in Lebanon. It had appeared that “the Americans had not come to negotiate.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said Iran would continue working to bring the positions of both sides closer together. The negotiations had taken place in the aftermath of a forty-day war and in an atmosphere of distrust. One should never have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, wrote that the talks were not an event but a process - they had laid the foundation for a diplomatic framework that, if trust and will grow, could enable sustainable solutions.

What the blockade means in practice is also militarily unclear. James Kraska, professor of international maritime law at the U.S. Naval War College and visiting professor at Harvard Law School, explained that the United States has the right to stop and search ships. A blockade of Iranian ports could significantly hit Iran’s oil revenues. Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said a blockade “destroys Iran’s business model” because the country is so dependent on oil exports. But Iran has laid mines in the strait - an estimated 5,000 of them - and still possesses missiles and drones. Trump said the British military would send ships to clear mines. The United Kingdom has not publicly confirmed this.

The ship-tracking company Tanker Trackers publicly expressed doubts about the enforceability of the blockade. Iran-linked tankers have long falsified their identification data to evade monitoring. Tanker Trackers addressed CENTCOM directly and wrote: “Good luck with that.”

Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that he did not understand the logic. He could not see how a blockade would force the Iranians to open the strait. He added that all intelligence he had seen indicated that Iran’s current leadership was even more radical than the predecessors who were killed in the war.

The roughly six-week-long war has so far cost Israel $11.5 billion, according to the Israeli Finance Ministry on Sunday. About $7.2 billion of that went toward military operations - ammunition and the pay of large numbers of reservists. The remainder was spent on compensation for damaged buildings, lost workdays, and improved shelters. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Sunday. “The war continues,” he said. By the afternoon, more than seventeen rocket alerts had been triggered in northern Israel.

Pakistani parliamentarian Mushahid Hussain Sayed said on CBS that the talks were not dead. There was a stalemate. Trump said Iran had not left the negotiating table. He was convinced the United States would ultimately get everything it wanted.

Somewhere between that conviction, the rising oil price, the 5,000 mines in the strait, the falsified ship identities, and the “good luck with that” from a ship-tracking company lies the world that will wake up tomorrow morning and need to fill up its tank.