Serial Liar and convicted felon Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that the embattled Strait of Hormuz remains open and letting oil tankers travel throgh but Iran’s leaders say otherwise as they continue to attack U.S. facilties in other Gulf nations and fired on a tanker that tried to use the passage way.
While Trump lies, both sides are attacking, the cost of crude oil is rising again and no peace exists.
Writes Hari Raj, Eric Schmitt, Jenny Gross and Leo Sands in The New York Times:
Senior Iranian officials dialed up their threats as the latest exchange of strikes with the United States spilled into Monday, with neither side showing signs of backing down from a cycle of attacks that is unraveling the cease-fire and pushing the region into deeper uncertainty.
Ali Bagheri Kani, the hard-line deputy secretary of the powerful Supreme National Security Council, was among the officials calling for revenge against the United States over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing it as “the right of the Iranian nation,” according to a statement reported by the state broadcaster. Within Iran, he and other conservative hard-liners have in recent weeks increasingly conveyed their desire to dig in.
Early Monday, Iran continued to launch another barrage of strikes aimed at American military assets throughout the Middle East. Hours earlier, U.S. forces said they had launched more strikes aimed at stymying Iran’s ability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest exchange caps a nearly weeklong flare-up of attacks between the United States and Iran as they have tussled over control of the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed before the war.
With the prospects of an immediate diplomatic solution to the impasse looking ever dimmer, the hostilities pushed up the price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, on Monday to roughly $78 a barrel, an increase of about 3 percent.
A framework deal signed by Mr. Trump and Iran’s president last month included language that Tehran said gave it control over traffic through the strait, but the United States has insisted that the passage remain open to all shipping.
After a brief respite following last month’s truce, shipping through the strait plummeted again over the weekend after Iran attacked a Cypriot-flagged container ship on Saturday that it accused of “violating” its conditions for transiting the waterway, setting off the latest exchange of hostilities. Just 14 ships passed through the waterway on Sunday, the lowest level in a month, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm.
The latest Iranian salvos on Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman were aimed at U.S. targets including ammunition depots and radar facilities, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement carried by state media. Authorities in Jordan and Kuwait said they were intercepting incoming fire, and air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, hours after U.S. forces said they had struck dozens of military targets in Iran.
Back from a NATO summit in Turkey, where he humiliated himself with blather and misstatements, Trump ordered flags at U.S. Government buildings be flown at half mast to honor the death of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The half mast flags should also signal the death of Trump’s political future.
Also in The Times, Jason Karaian and Lisa Friedman write:
The continued cycle of attacks between Iran and the United States in the Persian Gulf posed fresh risks to ships seeking to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, testing markets on Sunday.
Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 2 percent on Monday, to between $77 and $78 a barrel. That is 7 percent higher than its prewar price.
Daily ship traffic through the strait, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil, recently dropped to the lowest level in a month, with the latest data showing only 14 ships braving the passage on Sunday, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. More than 130 vessels passed through daily before the war.
In the latest round of attacks, the U.S. military said it had hit about 140 targets in Iran over the weekend after Tehran attacked a container ship in the strait. Iran’s military said on Monday it had responded by firing at U.S. military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.
Amena Bakr, head of Middle East research at Kpler, said any assurance that commercial vessels had gained with the ability to pass through the Strait of Hormuz over the past few weeks was gone.
“That confidence eroded very, very quickly,” Ms. Bakr said. “We’re back to square one when it comes to that situation.”
Although oil prices are far below the peak of nearly $120 a barrel during the worst of the war, the market shifts that follow each round of strikes have shown Iran’s capacity to move energy prices.
On Graham’s death, Olivia Diaz reports in The Times:
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, likely died on Saturday from a tear in his aorta, officials said, hours after returning to the United States from Ukraine and months before he was to face re-election.
Mr. Graham’s office said on Sunday that a preliminary report from Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Washington indicated that the senator had died from an aortic dissection, though that determination was subject to additional testing.
Mr. Graham, who was chairman of the Budget Committee and formerly led the Judiciary Committee, became a household name in Republican politics and was among President Trump’s closest and most loyal allies in the Senate. He died two days after his 71st birthday, and as he was seeking a fifth term.
A former Air Force lawyer who had served in the Air Force Reserve, Mr. Graham also developed a reputation as a foreign policy hawk who vehemently defended Israel and Ukraine. Hours before he died, the senator had returned to Washington after a trip to Ukraine, where he said he had reached agreement with colleagues in both parties and the White House on imposing sanctions targeting buyers of Russian oil.
Mr. Graham’s office did not provide any further details about what happened in the moments leading up to his death. But the medical examiner’s preliminary finding said he suffered a tear in the main artery that carries blood from the heart, “stemming from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” or a gradual weakening and hardening of the arteries.
According to recordings of dispatcher calls obtained by The New York Times, emergency workers responded on Saturday night to a call about a person experiencing chest pains at the senator’s Capitol Hill address. The recordings did not name Mr. Graham, who had returned from Ukraine hours earlier, but responders could be heard saying they were administering CPR to a person suffering from cardiac arrest.
Graham had run for president against Trump in 2016, calling the real estate developer a “fraud” and a “con man.”
“If you want to really make America great again, just tell Donald Trump to go to hell,” Graham said.
But when Trump won, Graham became an ally, a switch that surprised his supporters.
