President Donald Trump said US forces would destroy any Iranian “fast attack ships” that approach the American naval blockade of Iranian ports that came into effect on Monday.
“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that the rest of Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated.”
The US military would be “using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” the president said, referring to air strikes on alleged narcotics boats off the coast of Venezuela. He added that Iranian representatives had called to make a peace deal after talks in Pakistan ended at the weekend without agreement.
Iran’s military said a US naval blockade set to begin on Monday would be illegal and amount to piracy, warning that no Gulf ports would be safe if its own were threatened.
The failure to reach an agreement after more than 20 hours of negotiations in Islamabad raised fears of a resumption of attacks, which have killed more than 6,000 people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, for over six weeks, and caused significant disruption to the global economy.
United States Vice President JD Vance said “the ball is in the Iranian court” on ending the Middle East war, as diplomats accelerated efforts towards a new round of peace talks after weekend negotiations failed to produce a deal.
Iran, for its part, said it was inches away from an agreement. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi blamed the United States for the impasse in the talks. “Unfortunately, we witnessed the continued excessive demands of the American side in the negotiations, which led to the failure to achieve a result,” his ministry quoted him as saying.
The US news website Axios quoted a regional source and a US official as saying that Turkey, along with Pakistan and Egypt, would continue efforts to bridge the gap between the two sides.
China‘s President Xi Jinping vowed Tuesday that his country would play a “constructive role” in promoting peace talks in the Middle East. (AFP)
