A cargo vessel was struck by a projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations agency said Tuesday, and the blast damaged the engine room, caused a crew casualty and left the remaining crew needing help from the Omani Coast Guard. The waterway keeps showing who pays when states and militaries turn shipping lanes into bargaining chips.
Who Pays for the Standoff
The ship attack landed after Iranian military official Ebrahim Zolfaghari repeated threats over the strait. Fox News reported Tuesday that Zolfaghari said vessels trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz would "find several beautiful holes in their hulls." That’s the language of power talking to workers, sailors and anyone trapped in the path of a regional war that keeps tightening around ordinary movement.
Washington and Tehran also rejected further talks after a 60-day negotiating ceasefire deal, reached in mid-June to open space for diplomatic engagement, expired on Monday without a formal follow-on agreement. A team of analysts at Eurasia Group said Monday, "Both sides will dig in for a longer standoff," adding that neither side saw an urgent need to make concessions. The people on the ships and in the ports get the risk. The rulers get the leverage.
Earlier on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump ruled out extending the ceasefire, saying Tehran won't accept the terms he considers necessary to end their war. "They're not going to make the kind of deal that I feel is necessary," Trump said in the Oval Office. He later told Fox News, according to Trey Yingst, "Iran should wave the white flag of surrender." He also said, "I have no time schedule" and "I'm not in a hurry," even as the political fallout of the war in Iran collides with the November midterm elections.
The Strait as a Pressure Point
Iran's hardline leadership, according to the Wall Street Journal, has no intention of winding down the conflict and instead wants to widen the war to raise the costs for the U.S. and its regional allies. The paper said Sunday that it was citing intelligence obtained from unnamed Iranian and Arab officials. Eurasia Group no longer expects a peace deal by September and has pushed back its timeline for de-escalation to year-end as the standoff drags on. The consultancy said the most likely outcome is "a limited deal" that would allow Hormuz traffic to partially recover.
The Strait of Hormuz handled about a fifth of the world's crude oil and gas before the war and has become the central flashpoint between the U.S. and Iran since February. Shipping remains near a standstill amid sporadic attacks on oil tankers. Just three vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, according to shiptracking data from Kpler. The Bab el-Mandeb strait also saw just 49 weekend transits by commodity vessels, Reuters reported, down from 55 in the prior week.
Success in routing oil around the Strait of Hormuz has kept prices from spiking past $100 a barrel, and the global economy has adapted to the closure, giving the U.S. room to "afford to wait," Eurasia Group said. That’s the cold arithmetic of empire: if the market can reroute, the pressure can drag on.
Threats, Deals, and the People Caught Between
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a Telegram post on Saturday that Iran's negotiations with Oman remained ongoing to determine a new maritime route in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump on Monday threatened to bomb Oman if the Gulf state "gets in the way" of U.S. efforts to reopen the strait. USA TODAY reported that Trump told Fox News in an Aug. 17 phone interview, "If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s--- out of them," according to Trey Yingst, Fox News' chief foreign correspondent who talked to the president.
Trump later said in an Oval Office event on Aug. 17, "I don't think they've behaved very well, but we'd handle them very easily, just like we do other things." USA TODAY said the warning to Oman came as a 60-day window for the United States to negotiate with Iran, outlined in a memorandum of understanding in June, expired. The memorandum was intended to give the two sides two more months to hammer out a peace deal, but the preliminary agreement quickly fell apart, leaving no end in sight to a war that started in late February.
The two sides dispute who controls the Strait of Hormuz, which about 20% of the world's crude oil and liquefied gas pass through as a critical access point for Middle East oil exports. Since the memorandum unraveled, Iran has resumed attacks on ships in the strait that Iranian leaders say lack permission to access the channel. Through the U.S. naval blockade, Trump claims the United States has opened the strait to all commercial ships other than those from Iran, crippling Iran's economy because it relies on oil exports. Iran has rejected Trump's characterization, saying the waterway is under the "complete management and control" of Iran and that no commercial ships can go through without its permission.
The result is a choke point where states issue threats, ships get hit, and workers and crews absorb the damage. The machinery of control keeps grinding, and the people inside it keep paying.
Alliances, Exercises, and the Cost of Command
An AP report said Trump said Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un treats him with "great respect," a day after ordering the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea, which he criticized for not joining the U.S. war in Iran. Trump on Sunday ordered the U.S. military to downsize the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began Monday as scheduled. It wasn't known which parts of the training were being scaled back.
The AP report said the move baffled many in South Korea, which has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades and where national security is a top priority because of threats from nuclear-armed North Korea. Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration, said, "There is no American interest that I can see in this." He added, "On all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves NATO and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans."
Danny Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the Obama administration, said Trump's decision to side with North Korea, which strongly objects to the annual joint military exercises, is "firmly in the 'hard-to see-how-it-could-be-worse' category." He said, "It is tragically upside-down. Trump is punishing an ally while encouraging an adversary. He is protecting Kim Jong Un's sensitive feelings from an unfriendly signal at the expense of U.S.-South Korean security."
Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement, "Treating one of America's closest allies like an adversary weakens our alliances and benefits China and North Korea." Trump on Monday doubled down, posting a photo of North Korea's leader speaking on a phone with the caption, "HEY DONALD ... WE COOL, RIGHT?"
Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said the joint military exercises are critical to deterring North Korea, which has shunned any talks with the U.S. over its nuclear program and has accelerated weapons testing. "We also don't want South Korea to draw the conclusion that a nuclear weapons capability is the only guarantee it has to ensure its security," Wood said. Matthew Kroenig, now with the Atlantic Council, said polls show South Koreans have increasingly supported the idea of pursuing their own nuclear weapons. "The United States has been working really hard to try to persuade South Korea that they are protected," he said. Scaling back the exercises "potentially undermines that message," he said.
Trump's turnabout came even after South Koreans worked to flatter him, eager to gain favor on trade and defense. As soon as he sat down in the gilded Oval Office for his meeting with Trump last year, new President Lee Jae Myung praised the room's elaborate decor. Lee affirmed Trump's assertion that Kim would not have pursued his nuclear ambitions had Trump won a second consecutive term in 2020, while dangling the prospect of an eventual Trump Tower in North Korea. Trump just hours earlier had appeared to show sympathy for Lee's predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who had been ousted from office after imposing martial law in December 2024.
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump's scaling back of the exercises may prompt longtime allies to think more about their own security without U.S. help. "They are hoping that the American umbrella is there for the future," Kupchan said, "but they have to at least contemplate the idea that Uncle Sam won't be there for them."
Kupchan said Trump is not mistaken in wanting South Korea, as well as the Europeans, to contribute more to their defense, but said the president's unpredictable approach cuts through the solidarity that undergirds those alliances "because he ends up insulting allies." Fried said Trump seems unwilling to "take a win" after brow-beating NATO members and Asian allies into increasing their defense spending. "NATO is building up, South Korea is building up, Japan is building up. Trump has a problem with taking the win," Fried said. "It's like he wants to burn it all down."
John Herbst, a former ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush and now with the Atlantic Council, said the Korea decision shows how inconsistent the Trump administration can be in its policy pronouncements. "If these things grow in frequency and in importance, obviously we will be in the process of taking apart the alliance system, which has served us so well since the end of World War II," Herbst said. "But despite some statements which seem to head in that direction, we have not headed there in a consistent, strong way."
Kupchan agreed that while the president's language could be taken as "we're done with you," "the reality is that, at least as of today, Trump has left intact America's forward bases and its core alliance relationships." Kroenig said, "He's an unpredictable president. If we move on and the exercises go as planned and we never hear anything about this again, I wouldn't be surprised."