COMMENTARY: The IRGC Fires on a Cargo Ship — Iran Tests How Far It Can Go

Introduction: a cannon shot into an agreement that had not yet dried

The chronology of the unthinkable

Mid-June 2026: the United States and Iran sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that ends four months of devastating armed conflict and opens a 60-day window to negotiate a comprehensive agreement. Iran's main concession: allow free commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz during the negotiation period. The world holds its breath. Oil prices ease slightly. Shipping companies cautiously begin reassessing their routes.

Just days later, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launches a drone at the container ship Ever Lovely, registered in Singapore. It is the first attack on a commercial vessel since the MOU was signed. Trump calls it a "dumb violation of our ceasefire agreement." The United States launches retaliatory strikes on Iranian military installations on June 26 and 27. The IRGC claims to have struck back against American bases. Bahrain reports Iranian drone strikes on its territory. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) suspends its humanitarian evacuation operations in the strait. At least four ships turn back.

What this episode reveals — beyond the missiles

This one-week episode is not an accident or a navigation error. It is a deliberate strategic signal from Tehran — or more precisely, from a faction inside Iran that decided the agreement must not conclude without Iran's conditions on the strait being accepted first. Understanding this episode requires looking beyond the targeted vessel, beyond the American retaliatory strikes, down to the deep mechanics of a conflict not seeking peace — but peace on its own terms. And those terms include one thing the MOU has not yet granted: official sovereignty over the world's most strategically critical waterway.

That is what I want to address today. Not the military exchange — it is documented. But the logic. The method. And what it means for a West that, once again, finds itself managing a crisis it might have anticipated.

The MOU — what it said and what it did not say

The ambiguous clause that complicated everything

The mid-June memorandum of understanding contained a clause that analysts quickly labeled "vaguely worded." It stipulated that Iran and Oman would collaborate to define the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz. That formulation, which at first glance appeared to be a minor diplomatic concession, actually gave Tehran a legal argument to claim an official role in managing the strait — or even co-sovereignty over it.

American lawyers read the text as recognition of a management role within an international framework. Iranian lawyers read it as recognition of Iranian sovereignty over waters that, in their interpretation, are territorial waters. Those two readings are mutually exclusive. And as long as they coexisted without resolution, the agreement carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The vagueness was not a drafting oversight. It was the political condition that allowed each party to sign without losing face — knowing the definitional battle would come later.

What Iran conceded — and what it refused to concede

Iran's main concession in the MOU was to "use its best efforts" to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels. That soft formulation — "best efforts" — is not an absolute guarantee. It leaves Tehran considerable room to define what "best efforts" means under the circumstances. Iran refused, on the other hand, to acknowledge that the strait is an international waterway where no nation may impose passage rights. That is precisely the point on which Rubio and the Gulf states were categorical — and on which Iran was equally categorical in the opposite direction.

That fundamental disagreement about the legal status of the strait was not resolved at the time of signing. It was deliberately deferred to the following 60 days of negotiations. In doing so, both parties signed an agreement knowing they disagreed on the essentials. That is a way of buying time — not a way of making peace.

The attack — what exactly happened

The Ever Lovely and the sequence of events

According to information reported by CNN, the sequence of events is as follows. On a Thursday (likely June 25 or 26), the IRGC issued a warning: any vessel transiting through the strait without Iranian authorization or outside routes designated by Tehran "will be responsible for all consequences." Within hours of that communiqué, the container ship Ever Lovely, sailing on a route not approved by the IRGC, was struck by what the United States describes as "an Iranian drone." It is the first attack on a ship since the MOU was signed — a line-crossing explicitly mentioned in the agreement.

Trump reacted by declaring the attack a "dumb violation of the agreement." The United States launched strikes on Friday against Iranian military installations near the strait. The IRGC claimed to have retaliated against American bases — a claim not confirmed by Washington. Bahrain reported drone strikes on its territory. The IMO suspended its humanitarian evacuation operations in the strait to "await greater clarity." At least four commercial vessels turned back. The chaos was complete.

The objective of the attack — deconstructing the free-strait argument

According to maritime navigation analysts cited by CNN, the IRGC's attack on the Ever Lovely "signals Iran's intent to enforce its conditions over the strait — determining the schedule and routes for ships." That reading goes beyond simple military interpretation. The attack was not designed to sink a ship or provoke a war. It was designed to demonstrate concretely, before the eyes of the world's shipping companies, that Iran de facto controls traffic through the strait — with or without an American agreement.

By forcing vessels to choose between the IRGC-approved route and the risk of being struck, Tehran creates a behavioral precedent: captains, ship owners, and insurers learn that the Iranian route is the only "safe" route. Once that behavior is normalized, Iran will have established de facto control without needing a legal clause to formalize it. It is maritime coercion transformed into a navigation norm.

The American response — strikes that resolve nothing

The June 26 and 27 strikes — necessary but insufficient

The American strikes of June 26 and 27 against Iranian military installations were a predictable and necessary response. Not responding to an attack on a commercial vessel would have signaled to Tehran that the MOU was a zone of American non-response — an interpretation the IRGC would have exploited immediately. Trump was right to retaliate. The question is not whether to respond — it is how, and toward what objectives.

The problem with isolated retaliatory strikes is that they do not address the structural problem: Iran has not changed its interpretation of the strait, has not renounced its control claim, and has not modified its strategy. A strike on a military installation is painful for the IRGC — but the IRGC has demonstrated for decades a remarkable capacity to absorb costs without changing behavior. What changes its behavior is a modification of the structural balance of power — not isolated responses, however precise.

The "we shoot back harder" logic — and its limits

An American official told Axios: "Every time they fire, we fire more — and at targets that further degrade their position in the strait." That doctrine of gradual escalation has a certain military logic: if every Iranian attack costs more than it gains, Iran will eventually stop. But that logic rests on a premise: that the IRGC calculates the costs and benefits of each action rationally.

The IRGC is not, however, a purely rational organization. It also obeys ideological imperatives, internal power dynamics, and the need to demonstrate to its own base that the agreement with Washington is not a capitulation. Attacking a ship just days after the MOU was signed is also an internal message to the Islamic Republic: "we have not abandoned our control of the strait." That internal message may be worth more than the cost of an American retaliatory strike.

The stakes of the strait — the numbers that put everything in perspective

A fifth of the world's oil and LNG

The Strait of Hormuz is, by every measure, the world's most strategically sensitive waterway. Approximately 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products transited daily in 2025, according to the American Energy Information Administration — roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supply. It represents hundreds of billions of dollars in annual energy trade. It is used by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — the world's largest oil producers.

Before the conflict, 120 to 140 vessels transited daily. At the time of the late June attacks, that number had fallen to roughly 70 — less than half. Insurance premiums for very large crude carriers (VLCCs) exceeded one million dollars per crossing. Shipping companies were waiting for a "sustained period without incident" before resuming the route. The economic cost of this crisis — even with a fragile ceasefire — continued to feed global inflation.

Brent at $72 — and what it says about fragility

Brent crude was trading at around $72.24 per barrel at the time of the Doha talks — compared to $66 before the war. That $6-per-barrel differential, multiplied by 20 million daily barrels, represents approximately $120 million in daily extra costs for the global economy. One quarter at that rate is $10 billion absorbed by consumers, industries, and governments — at a planetary scale.

Those figures matter because they illustrate why Iran holds a position of strength in this negotiation. Its capacity to maintain disorder in the strait costs it — but it costs everyone else even more. Economist Vaez put it soberly: "The situation in the Strait of Hormuz has become mutually assured economic destruction." Mutual — but not symmetrical. Iran can survive this state of chaos. The world economies dependent on Gulf oil cannot as easily.

The IRGC — a government within the government

The most candid analysis — Vaez on the IRGC

The question many observers ask is: does the Iranian government — the president, the foreign ministry — actually control the IRGC? The answer from Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, cited in Al Jazeera, was blunt: "There is no distinction between the IRGC and the Iranian state. They are essentially one and the same. It is the IRGC that runs the game." That assertion has direct consequences for American negotiating strategy.

If the IRGC is the Iranian state, then concessions negotiated with the foreign ministry are only reliable insofar as the IRGC validates them. And if the IRGC determines that the agreement does not serve its institutional interests — control of the strait, sanctions-busting economics, arms flows to regional proxies — it can choose to sabotage it, as it appears to have done by attacking the Ever Lovely. An agreement the government signs but the Guards do not honor is not an agreement. It is paper.

The power structure in Tehran — what it means for negotiators

Iran's power structure is fundamentally opaque to outside negotiators. Supreme Leader Khamenei has the final word in theory — but in practice, the IRGC has accumulated considerable economic and military autonomy since 2000, with interests ranging from energy to construction to telecommunications. Those economic interests create internal resistance to any agreement that would reduce sanctions, open the Iranian economy to competition, and thus threaten the IRGC's dominant position in the current captive markets.

That is one of the most troubling paradoxes of American-Iranian negotiation: the sanctions Washington seeks to lift as a peace incentive are precisely what keeps the IRGC in a dominant position in the Iranian economy. Lifting sanctions without a structural change in governance could enrich the IRGC more than the civilian population. American negotiators know this. And it makes every potential economic concession as ambivalent as it is dangerous.

Maritime routes — the post-war chaos

Three routes, three risks

In June 2026, commercial vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz faced three options, each with its own risks. The first, the Iranian route, ran close to the Iranian coast and required prior authorization from the IRGC through the PGSA port authority — potentially exposing ship owners to future American sanctions if an agreement fails and transactions with Iran become illegal. The second, the Omani route announced by Muscat, skirted closer to Omani waters — but the IRGC had called it "unacceptable" and implicitly threatened vessels using it.

The third, the old central route, crossed through the middle of the strait in international waters — theoretically the only one compliant with maritime law, but without the "safety" of Iranian or Omani authorizations. This is probably the route the Ever Lovely was taking when it was struck. Kpler noted that vessels using IRGC-unapproved routes were "crossing at close proximity to each other, increasing the risk of accidents." The strait, in the first weeks after the agreement, looked more like an active war zone than a recovered shipping lane.

Insurers and ship owners — the real front line

Shipping insurance companies and ship owners represent, in their own way, the most sensitive front line of this crisis. They do not vote, make public statements, or launch military strikes. But their decisions — which premium rates to set, which vessels to allow into the strait, which routes to approve — are the ones that determine whether global trade resumes or not. And in June 2026, their verdict was unambiguous: it is not yet safe.

Maritime navigation experts cited a "significant gap between what was agreed by leaders in negotiations and the realities unfolding in the strait." As long as that gap persists, ships remain in port or take longer, more expensive alternative routes. And every day the strait remains partially blocked, Iran accumulates leverage for negotiations — because the world needs the strait to reopen, and only Iran can guarantee that full reopening.

What the West should have anticipated — and how to correct course

The structural weaknesses of the MOU

In retrospect, the mid-June MOU presented several structural weaknesses the West should have anticipated. First, its vague clause on the administration of the strait created space for incompatible interpretations. Second, it included no binding verification mechanisms to allow rapid documentation and attribution of violations. Third, it provided no automatic response to violations — leaving each incident to carry the burden of triggering either a potential escalation or a diplomatic capitulation.

Those gaps are not accidental drafting errors. They reflect the fundamental challenge of negotiating with a regime whose internal actors have an interest in the agreement not holding. The Trump administration, eager for a fast and visible agreement, may have accepted vague formulations to conclude faster. In doing so, it offered the IRGC precisely the room to maneuver it needed to sabotage the agreement while denying having done so.

What must change in the Western approach

For the Doha negotiations and their successors to lead to something durable, several adjustments are necessary. First, the legal status of the strait must be clarified in any final agreement — not deferred to bilateral Iran-Oman discussions that exclude other global stakeholders. Second, a mechanism for independent verification of violations must be established, with rapid attribution procedures. Third, automatic consequences for violations must be defined in advance — not negotiated case by case after each incident.

Those three requirements are politically difficult to impose on Tehran. But without them, every agreement is a fiction. And a fiction in the Strait of Hormuz costs the world $120 million per day — and potentially lives for the sailors navigating it.

The Iran-Russia dimension — an alignment that dares not speak its name

Russia as the silent beneficiary of the strait crisis

The Strait of Hormuz crisis cannot be analyzed without noting a beneficiary never directly mentioned in official communiqués: Russia. The partial closure of the strait since the start of the US-Iran conflict had driven global oil prices upward — from the pre-war $66 to $72–75 at the time of the late June strikes. That differential was filling Moscow's coffers at a moment when Western sanctions sought to empty them.

The Al Jazeera analysis of July 1 noted explicitly that "in the months following the Carnegie report's publication, Russia filled its coffers with billions in additional petrodollars thanks to Iran's strait closure, and is now in an even stronger position." This is not a coincidence. Russia and Iran share a common interest in a multipolar world where the West is constantly reacting rather than setting the agenda. The two countries may not coordinate every military action. But they share a geopolitical logic that makes them objective allies in this phase of Western order disruption.

China, Iran, Russia — the triangle of disruptors

China, for its part, observed the strait crisis with attention — as it observes everything that can weaken the West without directly implicating it. Beijing imports enormous quantities of Gulf oil — a prolonged strait crisis would be costly for it. But a short crisis that distracts Washington, exhausts American credibility, and tests the limits of allied resilience? That is a free study opportunity. And while Trump was managing Iran, Beijing was advancing its pawns at Scarborough Shoal.

This triangle of disruptors — Russia, Iran, China — does not form a formal alliance. They have divergent interests on many issues. But they share a structural interest in a world where international norms erode, where force overrides law, and where the West runs from one crisis to the next without ever regaining the initiative. The Strait of Hormuz in June 2026 was one element in that larger picture. And understanding it as such is indispensable for responding to it effectively.

The humanitarian dimension — the forgotten sailors

500 ships, thousands of sailors stranded

In media coverage of this crisis, one dimension consistently stays at the margins: human beings. The IMO had put in place, before the Ever Lovely attack, a coordinated humanitarian evacuation plan for more than 500 commercial vessels carrying more than 11,000 sailors stranded in the Persian Gulf since the start of the conflict. That operation was suspended after the attack, "until greater clarity is obtained."

Those 11,000 sailors — men and women from the Philippines, India, Ukraine, Russia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and a dozen other countries — were waiting in complete uncertainty, aboard immobilized vessels, in a zone of active military tension. Their families at the other end of the world did not know in what state they would find them. Geopolitics had faces. Those faces belonged to the most invisible workers in the global economy.

Humanitarian maritime law — an obligation no one enforces

Under international maritime law, there are obligations to protect vessels and their crews, even in times of conflict. Those obligations are systematically violated when an actor — whether a state or a paramilitary — decides that the logic of coercion overrides the law. The IRGC has shown no regard for these obligations. Its warnings to commercial vessels were formulated in terms of threat, not protection.

The West must demand that any agreement with Iran include explicit, verifiable guarantees with automatic consequences for the protection of commercial crews and their vessels. Not as a secondary diplomatic clause — but as a non-negotiable condition. If Iran cannot guarantee the safety of sailors, it cannot manage the strait. It is that simple.

Historical precedent — when Iran closed Hormuz in the past

1980–1988: the tanker war as a warning

The 2026 crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is not the first time Iran has turned this waterway into a geopolitical weapon. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), Iran and Iraq attacked hundreds of commercial vessels in the Gulf — an episode known as the "tanker war." The United States ultimately intervened in Operation Earnest Will in 1987–88, escorting Kuwaiti tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks. The precedent is instructive: when commercial navigation is threatened in a sustained enough manner, major naval powers eventually intervene militarily — at the risk of an escalation they sought to avoid.

In 2019, the IRGC seized British and Scandinavian tankers in the strait — a calculated provocation that was managed through quiet diplomatic negotiations without major escalation. In 2026, the context is radically different: the United States launched military strikes on Iranian sites. The IRGC's retaliation against the Ever Lovely fits into a spiral of escalation that none of the historical precedents had definitively broken.

What history says about the durability of agreements with Iran

The history of American-Iranian agreements is littered with disappointed hopes. The Algiers Accords of 1981 ended the hostage crisis — but diplomatic relations never normalized. The Geneva Channel negotiations of 2001, after 9/11, showed unexpected Afghan cooperation — then Bush included Iran in his "axis of evil," erasing the progress made. The JCPOA of 2015 was held up as a model of multilateral diplomacy — before Trump renounced it in 2018.

Each time, the same dynamic: a fragile agreement, built on distrust, that collapses as soon as confidence within one or the other camp fractures. This is not fatalism — it is a pattern that can be broken, but only if both parties make institutional efforts to exit the cycle. The Doha talks will only be an exception to this pattern if a credible verification mechanism is put in place — which history suggests is the hardest part of any negotiation with Tehran.

The global economic dimension — a strait that conditions markets

Insurance companies as a barometer of the crisis

There is one indicator that diplomats rarely consult but that markets follow with clinical precision: maritime insurance premiums for vessels transiting through the Strait of Hormuz. Before the 2026 conflict, these premiums represented a fraction of a percent of cargo value — a marginal cost absorbed in the final price. At the height of the crisis, these premiums had climbed to levels that made some voyages economically non-viable. Large shipping companies had decided to bypass the region entirely, via the Cape of Good Hope — a detour of several weeks that substantially increases delivery costs.

This is not only about energy. The Strait of Hormuz also carries general cargo containers, automobiles, steel, food products. When the strait is disrupted, the entire regional supply chain is affected — including the Gulf states themselves, which are massive importers of consumer goods. Iran believes it is threatening the West. It is also threatening its Arab neighbors — and ultimately, its own export capacity.

The global oil stakes in an energy transition context

The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz occurs in a specific context: a global energy transition that is advancing, but has not yet substantially reduced dependence on Gulf oil. In 2026, Middle Eastern oil still represents an irreplaceable share of global supply — particularly for Asia (China, India, Japan, South Korea). The geopolitical vulnerability of the strait is therefore a real, concrete vulnerability, one that will not disappear for decades — even with accelerating renewables.

The countries with the most to lose from a prolonged strait closure are not necessarily the most active in defending it. China and India, major importers of Gulf oil, maintain cautious diplomatic positions that avoid frontal opposition to Iran. That is a motivation asymmetry: those who depend most on the strait are also those with the least capacity or political will to contribute to its security. That asymmetry gives Iran a lever that Western states alone cannot neutralize.

Regional geopolitics after the crisis — how the Middle East is reshaping itself

Gulf states caught between two fires

For the Persian Gulf monarchies — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain — the 2026 crisis was a double trauma. On one side, Iran threatening their export lanes and having struck Bahrain. On the other, a United States under Trump whose commitment to regional security remains conditional and unpredictable. These countries find themselves in an uncomfortable position: dependent on Washington for their ultimate security, yet without certainty that dependence is reliable.

The response from several Gulf states has been to accelerate their own military buildup — acquisitions of advanced weapons systems, training of their own forces, development of national capabilities. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has invested massively in its defense capabilities. This is a structural transformation of the regional security landscape: a more militarized Middle East, with more numerous and better-equipped actors, in a context of cross-cutting distrust. A more sophisticated powder keg — not necessarily a safer one.

Israel — the absent actor present in every calculation

Israel played a role in triggering the 2026 crisis — American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites were preceded and accompanied by Israeli operations. But in the Doha negotiations, Israel is formally absent — for obvious reasons: Iran would refuse to negotiate with an American mediator if Israel were officially in the room. And yet, Jerusalem is present in every calculation: on security guarantees, on Iran's nuclear program, on pro-Iranian militias in Lebanon and Gaza.

A US-Iran agreement that does not account for Israel's security interests on the nuclear question will be difficult to sustain — because Israel has shown it is prepared to act unilaterally to prevent a nuclear Iran, regardless of Washington's position at any given moment. And an agreement that includes sufficient guarantees for Israel will be harder for Tehran to accept. That triangle is one more Gordian knot in an already extraordinarily complex negotiation.

Consequences for global commercial navigation

New maritime routes bypassing the strait

The 2026 crisis accelerated a conversation shipping companies had been having for years: how to diversify supply routes to reduce dependence on chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz? The closure or disruption of the strait made urgent alternatives that had previously been marginal. Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, which routes Saudi oil to the Red Sea without passing through the Gulf, saw maximum utilization. Discussions resumed on expanding the capacity of the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline toward Fujairah on the UAE's eastern coast.

Those alternatives exist — but they have limited capacity and cannot replace the volume that normally transits Hormuz. In the short term, strait disruptions cannot be fully compensated by alternative routes. In the medium term — five to ten years — massive investments in those alternative infrastructures could reduce the vulnerability. But that vulnerability reduction will not happen on its own — it requires political decisions and massive investments that the 2026 crisis should serve as an incentive to accelerate.

The impact on consumer prices — a distant war with nearby effects

For ordinary consumers in energy-importing countries — in Europe, Asia, North America — the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz had concrete effects. Gasoline prices rose. Airline tickets became more expensive, kerosene being a petroleum derivative. Food prices followed — industrial agriculture depends on natural gas-derived fertilizers, a significant share of which transits through Hormuz.

That link between a distant geopolitical crisis and household daily life is often underestimated in public debates on the Middle East. Citizens who take no interest in geopolitics understand the consequences at the gas pump. And that is precisely why the Hormuz crisis created political pressure on Western governments to act — not on principle, but because the economic effects were visible, measurable, and electorally significant.

Conclusion: the Strait of Hormuz as a test of Western will

What the late-June crisis reveals about the West

The crisis that followed the Ever Lovely attack in late June 2026 reveals something important about the West in 2026: it is permanently in reaction mode. It signs agreements without the mechanisms that would make them durable. It responds to violations with strikes that do not prevent the next violations. And it leaves fundamental questions — the status of the strait, the nuclear program, the role of the IRGC — to future discussions that do not conclude in time.

This is not a criticism of Western courage or military capabilities — those are real. It is a criticism of strategy, or rather its absence. Facing an Iran that plays the long game with clear objectives, the West plays the short game with shifting objectives. That temporal asymmetry is not fatal — it can be corrected. But not without a deliberate political decision to treat the Iranian file with the consistency and duration it requires.

What remains to be accomplished — and what inaction costs

Two things must happen for the strait crisis to be genuinely resolved. First, a final agreement with Iran that settles the nuclear program, clarifies the status of the strait, and incorporates binding verification mechanisms. Second, a maritime security architecture in the Persian Gulf that is not held hostage to the IRGC's moods — including a permanent multilateral naval presence with a clear mandate and defined rules of engagement.

Without those two elements, every agreement will be fragile, every skirmish will restart the crisis, and $120 million daily will continue to evaporate from the global economy while diplomats talk through mediators in Doha hotels. Iran is testing how far it can go. The West's response must be clear: up to a line that is not crossed — and that line must carry automatic, predictable, non-negotiable consequences. Not a promise. A system.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Positioning and bias

I consider Iran — in its current governmental form — a threat to regional stability and to international freedom of navigation. I support a firm, consistent Western policy grounded in robust verification mechanisms in negotiations with Tehran. Those convictions inform my analysis — I make them explicit so that readers can take them into account.

This article draws on Al Jazeera, CNN, Axios, Iran International, and Gulf News, published between June 25 and July 1, 2026. The analysis by Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group is independent expert analysis. Commercial data (maritime traffic, insurance premiums, oil prices) comes from Kpler and the EIA.

What I do not know

I do not know with certainty whether the Ever Lovely attack was a decision coordinated at the level of the Supreme Leader or an autonomous IRGC action. I have no information on internal Tehran discussions about the terms of the agreement. I do not know the exact state of damage to Iranian military installations struck by the United States on June 26 and 27.

The Iranian statements cited — notably those from the IRGC — are official communications. I have treated them as political signals rather than precise descriptions of operational reality. American statements about the retaliation were also presented as official positions, not independently verified in every detail.

Sources

Primary sources

Al Jazeera — IRGC warns against new Hormuz route for ships — June 25, 2026

CNN — US and Iran: Hormuz remains chaotic despite agreement — June 27, 2026

Al-Ahram — Iran maritime body on Hormuz closure — June 2026

Secondary sources

Iran International — Iran US negotiations and Hormuz — June 2026

Gulf News — Iran responsible for attack on ship in Gulf of Oman — June 2026

KRGV — Iran reopens Strait of Hormuz but threatens to close again — June 2026