Iran has not yet responded to Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension, and both countries have warned they were prepared to resume fighting if a deal isn’t reached.
Trump said Tuesday night in a social media post that “Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open” so they can sell their crude oil, after earlier saying that the U.S. military would maintain its blockade of Iranian ports.
Meanwhile, Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon traded some fire Tuesday, despite expected talks in Washington this week after a 10-day ceasefire went into effect last Friday.
Since the war started, fighting has killed at least 3,375 people in Iran and more than 2,290 in Lebanon. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
Iran hangs another man over alleged ties to Mossad
Iran hanged another man Wednesday over alleged ties to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency as Tehran continues a series of executions during the war, and after nationwide protests in January.
The Mizan news agency of Iran’s judiciary announced the execution of Mehdi Farid.
It described Farid as working for a “sensitive state organization” and passing information to the Israeli spy agency.
It said Farid was convicted in Iran’s Qom province.
Human rights activists have long said Iran convicts people in closed-door trials without allowing defendants to properly defend themselves.
There have been multiple executions of alleged spies recently, as well as protesters and those affiliated with an Iranian exiled opposition group.
Container ship in strait ‘ignored the warnings’ before attack, Iranian website says
Nour News, a website long affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the Guard opened fire on the container ship after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian armed forces.”
Nour News added the ship sustained “extensive damage” in the attack.
Although the U.S. focused much of its fire in the war on Iran’s navy, sinking and heavily damaging dozens of vessels, the Guard operates a fleet of small attack boats, some of which apparently survived the war.
Those vessels typically carry mounted machine guns, and can be used for mining operations.
The Guard earlier Wednesday had vowed to “deliver crushing blows beyond the enemy’s imagination to its remaining assets in the region.”
The Guard “remains at peak readiness and determination to continue the fight, prepared for a decisive, certain and immediate response to any threat or renewed aggression,” the statement added.
ary Guard opens fire on ship in Strait of Hormuz
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard opened fire Wednesday on a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, damaging the ship and further raising the stakes as planned ceasefire talks in Pakistan failed to materialize.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the attack happened around 7:55 a.m. in the strait and targeted a container ship.
The UKMTO said a Guard gunboat did not hail the ship before firing.
It said no one was hurt and there was no environmental impact from the attack.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies, believed to be close to the Guard, both reported on the attack, citing the UKMTO.
Fars went further to describe Iran as “lawfully enforcing” its control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil and natural gas traded once passed.
However, the strait had been considered an international waterway for the world’s shippers despite being in the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman.
The attack comes after the U.S. military seized an Iranian container ship after shooting it this past weekend, and after it boarded an oil tanker associated with Iran’s oil trade in the Indian Ocean.
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