BBC: On Monday, the US president said he would impose a 20% charge on all cargo shipped through the key oil shipping route
The toll will be replaced with “trade and investment deals” with Gulf states, he now writes on Truth Social…
After Hormuz, Iran turns to Red Sea gateway as new pressure point
Having choked off shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is now signaling it could play its most dangerous card yet: using Yemen’s Houthi allies to shut the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world’s most vital energy arteries at risk…
Washington and Tehran send warnings by missile
This time, the two countries appear to be trying to calibrate their escalation of the conflict, while striking selected sites that signal how each is willing to raise the stakes as they battle to control the strait.
“They are looking at war as a negotiating tactic,” said Ali Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, who said both sides were seeking to use force to impose their own interpretations of a memorandum of understanding reached in June…
The Battle for Hormuz: Trump Shifts Into Dangerous New Phase in Iran War
A stable peace appears elusive, some former officials say, as each side is calculating that it can win the long game in a test of wills that may haunt the rest of Trump’s presidency, including through the midterm elections in November.
“We are now locked in a coercive war of attrition. Both sides are trying to push the other past some unknowable pain threshold,” said Kenneth Pollack, the vice president of the Middle East Institute and a former CIA analyst. “Coercive wars can go on and on.”…
Operation Boomerang: A return to military strikes reveals no good options — for Iran or the US
Neither Israel nor the US defined with specificity the objectives to be achieved when the attack on Iran launched nearly five months ago. Trump spoke of regime change, as well as degrading Iran’s military capabilities and removing its remaining nuclear material left over from airstrikes he had ordered last summer. Iran responded by attacking countries across the Middle East — and commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the channel accounting for 20% of global energy trade.
Today, the main objective for the US is to open the strait, an objective that — as Clausewitz might have warned — was not even on the table when the war began…