Iran closes Strait of Hormuz after US maintains port blockade amid peace talks

On Friday morning, the Strait of Hormuz reopened. For the first time in weeks, oil tankers and commercial vessels began moving through one of the world's most critical waterways—the passage that carries a fifth of all global crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Markets responded immediately. Stock exchanges climbed. Oil prices fell. In Washington, President Donald Trump declared that a broader peace agreement between the United States and Iran was "very close." The optimism felt real, felt earned. By Saturday afternoon, it had evaporated.

Iran announced it had closed the strait again—just hours after reopening it. The reason was blunt: the United States had not lifted its blockade of Iranian ports. The Iranian military command released a statement accusing America of continuing "acts of piracy" under the guise of sanctions, despite Iran's decision to allow a limited number of vessels through in good faith. The strategic waterway, they said, was now back under Iran's "strict control."

The reversal was stark and immediate. On Saturday morning, tracking data showed only a handful of ships moving through the strait—just over ten vessels, including tankers. Before the conflict began on February 28, nearly 120 ships passed through daily. By mid-morning, at least two of those few vessels appeared to be turning back. One cruise ship, the Celestyal Discovery, made an unusual empty transit between Dubai and Muscat, a journey that would have been routine months earlier but now felt like a small act of defiance against the closure.

The economic consequences rippled outward. The brief reopening had already triggered a sharp drop in oil prices, a sign of how tightly global energy markets are wound around this single chokepoint. Now, with the strait closed again, that relief would reverse. The fragility of the moment became visible: a single decision, a single accusation, and the tentative progress of hours dissolved.

Diplomacy, meanwhile, was moving on multiple fronts. Pakistan's military commander, General Asim Munir, had just concluded a three-day visit to Iran. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was wrapping up a tour that took him through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey—all moves designed to build momentum toward a wider settlement. Yet these careful diplomatic maneuvers now seemed to be racing against the clock, against the logic of escalation that the strait's closure represented.

In Lebanon, a different kind of ceasefire was holding, at least for now. A truce between Israel and Hezbollah had begun Friday at midnight, ending a month and a half of fighting that killed nearly 2,300 people and displaced more than a million. Israeli forces remained positioned in a ten-kilometer strip along the border. Trump had announced that the United States had "prohibited" Israel from bombing Lebanon further, a statement he posted in capital letters on his Truth Social account: "Israel will not bomb Lebanon anymore. The United States PROHIBITED it. ENOUGH!"

Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun was already looking beyond the ceasefire, toward what he called "a permanent agreement" with Israel. He promised to protect his country's rights and cede no territory in negotiations—language that suggested both hope and the weight of what had been lost. For Aoun, the truce was a transition, a phase in which to build something more durable.

But the Strait of Hormuz closure suggested that durability remained elusive. The dispute over uranium enrichment—whether Iran would transfer its enriched uranium reserves, a central point of contention—remained unresolved. Trump had claimed Iran had agreed to hand over the material; Iran denied it. The gap between what each side said had happened and what actually happened was itself a kind of blockade, one made of words and accusations. As long as that gap existed, the physical blockades—of ports, of straits—seemed likely to remain.