Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the United States meets Iran’s conditions, while Israel’s military declared the Christian-majority town of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank a closed military zone to keep out Israeli settlers and other non-residents. Different fronts. Same machinery. States and armed blocs keep ordinary people boxed in, whether the choke point is a sea lane, a village road, or a military order stamped in the name of “keeping the peace.”
The Strait as Leverage
Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the United States stops and makes amends for what he called its “illegal and destructive actions.” He said Iran wants the U.S. to end the blockade, pay compensation for months of war damage, lift economic sanctions and release Iran’s frozen assets. The closure of the strait, which normally carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies, has become the war’s most lasting consequence, and the impasse has kept energy prices a major focus of U.S. politics ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Iran is holding separate talks with Oman over transit through the strait, including potentially a temporary shipping corridor, but has said any reopening depends on talks with the U.S. The corridor talk sits neatly inside the usual state ritual: blockade, counter-blockade, negotiation, and the public gets to live with the price tag.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country’s supreme leader is calling for “unity and cohesion” as Iran faces economic hardships and sanctions from its war with the United States. In an interview with Iranian state television, Pezeshkian described a nearly seven-hour meeting with Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, saying they discussed “people’s livelihoods, the state of the market, employment, people’s housing,” as well as “problems that are now being created as a result of the (U.S.) sanctions.” He said Khamenei stressed unity. “All of the enemy’s plans are aimed at creating division,” Pezeshkian said. “What we have to do is prevent divisions from emerging.”
Pezeshkian said it was only the second time he had met with the new supreme leader since Khamenei was appointed in March following a U.S.-Israeli strike that killed his father. Khamenei, who was believed to have been wounded in the same attack, has not appeared in public since then. The Iranian president said the meeting came amid apparent tensions among the Islamic Republic’s leaders.
Iran on Sunday appointed Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to its new supreme leader, to head the Supreme National Security Council. Rezaei commanded Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard from 1981 to 1997, a period that includes Iran’s 1980s war with Iraq. The 71-year-old hardliner last week threatened American forces with “serious risks and casualties” if the U.S. did not lift its blockade of Iranian ports. Rezaei replaced Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who took the security council role in March after his predecessor was killed by an Israeli strike. Zolghadr will become a political adviser to Khamenei.
The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think-tank, said Rezaei appears willing to negotiate with the U.S. to “secure Iran’s maximalist aims, including control of the Strait of Hormuz,” but has also been “unwilling to present any Iranian concessions.”
Yemen’s Truce, Then the Next Round
In Yemen, U.N. envoy Hans Grundberg warned that the country faces a greater risk of renewed large-scale conflict than at any point since the U.N.-brokered truce of April 2022. He said the escalation risks “jeopardizing the gains of the 2022 truce ... while also drawing the country into a broader regional confrontation, with devastating consequences for its people.” Grundberg said he has held intensive talks with Yemeni parties and regional governments to avert further escalation.
The latest spiral began July 13, when a Saudi airstrike hit the runway of the airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and prevented the landing of an Iranian flight carrying a high-ranking Houthi delegation. The Houthis had tried to fly the plane without prior permission from the Saudi-led coalition, a decade-long war-related requirement, in what the AP said was an attempt to establish a new reality on the ground and challenge the coalition’s control over Yemeni airspace. The rebels turned down an offer by the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government in Yemen to facilitate the delegation’s travel to Sanaa on a non-Iranian airline, according to government and Houthi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Houthis proceeded with the flight operated by Iranian privately owned, U.S.-sanctioned Mahan Air, forcing the Saudi-led strike that disabled the Sanaa airport. The coalition later allowed the flight to land in Houthi-controlled Hodeida as part of an Omani-led effort to avert escalation, according to a Gulf official who also spoke anonymously.
Yasmeen al-Eryani, an analyst at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, said the Mahan Air flight saga is part of Iran’s escalation of the war. “By activating the Yemeni front, Tehran reiterates the strategic value of that pressure lever and signals that attacks on Iran can produce costs elsewhere, particularly for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” she said. After the Sanaa airport strike, the Houthis attacked Abha airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia and announced a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. They attacked Saudi vessels and oil facilities inside the kingdom, adding further disruption to the global economy. The Saudi-led coalition responded with strikes on Hodeida and Kamaran, Yemen’s largest island in the Red Sea, and reinforced Yemeni troops along the front lines to launch a ground offensive on the Houthis, Yemeni officials said. Anticipating that offensive, the rebels launched dozens of missiles and drones on military camps in central and southern Yemen, killing dozens of troops and civilians. They also attacked the Red Sea city of Mokha, severely damaging its crucial port, which remains under the control of the internationally recognized government.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacked the government-held Red Sea port town of Mokha on Sunday, killing seven people and injuring 30, Yemen’s Defense Ministry said. It said four military personnel and three civilians were killed. The attack on Mokha was described as part of one of the largest waves of Houthi strikes on Yemeni military positions and areas held by the Saudi-backed government since the 2022 truce. The AP said the threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have renewed focus on the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait at its southern tip, and some shipping has shifted toward that route with Hormuz largely off limits to traffic.
Taybeh and the Closed Zone
The AP also reported that Israel’s military said Monday it had declared the Christian-majority town of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank a closed military zone to keep out Israeli settlers and other non-residents. The new tactic is designed to keep Israelis out of Taybeh, which is surrounded by settlements to its east and west and has been subject to arson, vandalism and settlers coming onto private and village property. The order does not apply to Palestinian residents or journalists, who the army said would be allowed unless soldiers determine their presence poses a threat. The army said its troops would detain suspects and disperse gatherings to keep the peace.
The designation came after months of the army and police struggling to maintain order throughout the territory, where at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in 2026, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry. Parts of Taybeh lie in Area B, where Israel maintains security control, but residents have complained that the army and police are slow to respond to attacks by extremist settlers.
Across Hormuz, Sanaa, Mokha and Taybeh, the pattern is the same: armed authorities set the terms, civilians absorb the damage, and the official language of security keeps doing the work. The names change. The apparatus doesn’t.