Iran closes Strait of Hormuz again in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, threatening ceasefire

Iran closed the Strait of Hor­muz again Wednes­day in re­sponse to Is­raeli at­tacks against the Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group in Lebanon, cast­ing doubt over whether an al­ready pre­car­i­ous cease­fire to end more than a month of war will hold.

The Unit­ed States and Iran both claimed vic­to­ry af­ter reach­ing the agree­ment, and world lead­ers ex­pressed re­lief, even as more drones and mis­siles hit Iran and Gulf Arab coun­tries. Is­rael al­so in­ten­si­fied its at­tacks in Lebanon, hit­ting sev­er­al com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial ar­eas in Beirut with­out warn­ing. At least 112 peo­ple were killed and hun­dreds were wound­ed in one of the dead­liest days in the lat­est Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war.

The fresh vi­o­lence threat­ened to scut­tle what U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance called a “frag­ile” deal.

“Ag­gres­sion to­wards Lebanon is ag­gres­sion to­wards Iran,” Gen. Seyed Ma­jid Mousavi, aero­space com­man­der of Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard, wrote on X. He warned that Iran­ian forces were prepar­ing a “heavy re­sponse” with­out re­veal­ing de­tails.

U.S. De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth said Amer­i­can and Is­raeli forces had achieved a “cap­i­tal V mil­i­tary vic­to­ry” and that the Iran­ian mil­i­tary no longer posed a sig­nif­i­cant threat to U.S. forces or the re­gion. The Iran­ian mil­i­tary said the coun­try forced Is­rael and the U.S. to ac­cept its “pro­posed con­di­tions and sur­ren­der.”

Much about the agree­ment was un­clear as the sides pre­sent­ed vast­ly dif­fer­ent vi­sions of the terms.

— Iran said the deal would al­low it to for­mal­ize its new prac­tice of charg­ing ships pass­ing through the strait, a cru­cial tran­sit lane for oil. But the de­tails were not clear, nor was it known whether ves­sels would feel safe us­ing the chan­nel or whether ship traf­fic had re­sumed. It al­so was un­clear whether any oth­er coun­try agreed to this con­di­tion.

— Pak­istan, which helped to me­di­ate the deal, and oth­ers said fight­ing would pause in Lebanon, where Is­rael has launched a ground in­va­sion against the Iran-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group. Is­rael said it would not, and strikes hit Beirut on Wednes­day.

— The fate of Iran’s mis­sile and nu­clear pro­grams — the elim­i­na­tion of which were ma­jor ob­jec­tives for the U.S. and Is­rael in go­ing to war — al­so re­mained un­clear. Trump said the U.S. would work with Iran to re­move buried en­riched ura­ni­um, though Iran did not con­firm that.

In the streets of Tehran, pro-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tors screamed: “Death to Amer­i­ca, death to Is­rael, death to com­pro­mis­ers!” af­ter the cease­fire an­nounce­ment and burned Amer­i­can and Is­raeli flags.

The chants un­der­scored the anger an­i­mat­ing hard-lin­ers, who have been prepar­ing for what many as­sumed would be an apoc­a­lyp­tic bat­tle with the Unit­ed States. Trump warned Tues­day that “a whole civ­i­liza­tion will die tonight,” if a deal was not reached.

Cease­fire terms are murky

Trump ini­tial­ly said Iran pro­posed a “work­able” 10-point plan that could help end the war the U.S. and Is­rael launched on Feb. 28. But when a ver­sion in Far­si emerged that in­di­cat­ed Iran would be al­lowed to con­tin­ue en­rich­ing ura­ni­um — which is key to build­ing a nu­clear weapon — Trump called it fraud­u­lent with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Vance lat­er said the deal was be­ing mis­rep­re­sent­ed with­in Iran, though he did not of­fer de­tails.

Iran’s de­mands for end­ing the war in­clude a with­draw­al of U.S. com­bat forces from the re­gion, the lift­ing of sanc­tions and the re­lease of its frozen as­sets.

Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res’s per­son­al en­voy ar­rived in Iran for talks on “the way for­ward.”

Pak­istan said talks to seek a per­ma­nent end to the war could be­gin in Is­lam­abad as soon as Fri­day. Trump told The New York Post that in-per­son talks would hap­pen “very soon.”

Is­rael backed the U.S. cease­fire with Iran, but Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said the deal does not cov­er fight­ing against Hezbol­lah. Trump told the “PBS News Hour” that Lebanon was not in­clud­ed in the cease­fire deal “be­cause of Hezbol­lah.”

Is­raeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Za­mir said Is­rael will con­tin­ue to “uti­lize every op­er­a­tional op­por­tu­ni­ty” to strike Hezbol­lah. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it struck more than 100 tar­gets with­in 10 min­utes Wednes­day across Lebanon, the largest wave of strikes since March 1.

Lebanese Pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun con­demned the Is­raeli at­tacks as “bar­bar­ic.” Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit ac­cused Is­rael of “per­sis­tent­ly seek­ing to sab­o­tage” the Iran cease­fire deal.

Hezbol­lah has not con­firmed if it will abide by the cease­fire, though the group has said it was open to giv­ing me­di­a­tors a chance to se­cure an agree­ment. An of­fi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause he was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly, said the group would not stop fir­ing at Is­rael un­less Is­rael agreed to do the same.

Iran and Oman will col­lect ship­ping fees in Strait of Hor­muz

While Iran could not match the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of U.S. and Is­raeli weapon­ry or their dom­i­nance in the air, its abil­i­ty to con­trol the Strait of Hor­muz proved a tremen­dous strate­gic ad­van­tage. Iran­ian at­tacks and threats de­terred many com­mer­cial ships from pass­ing through the wa­ter­way, through which 20% of all trad­ed oil and nat­ur­al gas pass­es in peace­time.

That roiled the world econ­o­my and raised the pres­sure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the stand­off.

The cease­fire may for­mal­ize a sys­tem of charg­ing fees in the strait that Iran in­sti­tut­ed — and give it a new source of rev­enue.

The plan al­lows for both Iran and Oman to charge ships, ac­cord­ing to a re­gion­al of­fi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss ne­go­ti­a­tions they were di­rect­ly in­volved in. The of­fi­cial said Iran would use the mon­ey it raised for re­con­struc­tion.

That would up­end decades of prece­dent treat­ing the strait as an in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ter­way that was free to tran­sit and will like­ly not be ac­cept­able to the Gulf Arab states, which al­so need to re­build af­ter re­peat­ed Iran­ian at­tacks tar­get­ing their oil fields.

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi said pas­sage through the strait would be al­lowed un­der Iran­ian mil­i­tary man­age­ment, fur­ther cloud­ing the pic­ture of who would be al­lowed to tran­sit the wa­ter­way.

News of the cease­fire sent stock mar­kets surg­ing world­wide, and oil prices plunged back to­ward $90 per bar­rel.

Iran’s nu­clear and mis­sile threats sur­vive

U.S.-Is­raeli strikes have bat­tered Iran and its lead­er­ship, but they have not en­tire­ly elim­i­nat­ed the threats posed by Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram, its bal­lis­tic mis­siles or its sup­port for re­gion­al prox­ies, like Hezbol­lah. The U.S. and Is­rael said ad­dress­ing those threats was a key jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for go­ing to war.

Trump said Wednes­day that the U.S. would work with Iran to “dig up and re­move” en­riched ura­ni­um that was buried un­der joint U.S-Is­raeli strikes in June. He added that none of the ma­te­r­i­al had been touched since. Any re­trieval is ex­pect­ed to be an in­ten­sive un­der­tak­ing.

There was no con­fir­ma­tion from Iran.

Hegseth told a Pen­ta­gon brief­ing Wednes­day that the U.S. would do “some­thing like” last June’s joint strikes with Is­rael on Iran­ian nu­clear sites if the coun­try re­fus­es to sur­ren­der its en­riched ura­ni­um vol­un­tar­i­ly.

Tehran in­sist­ed for years that its nu­clear pro­gram was peace­ful, al­though it en­riched ura­ni­um up to 60% pu­ri­ty, a short, tech­ni­cal step from weapons-grade lev­els.

Iran re­ferred to its nu­clear pro­gram dif­fer­ent­ly in two ver­sions of the cease­fire plan that it re­leased. The ver­sion in Far­si in­clud­ed the phrase “ac­cep­tance of en­rich­ment” for its nu­clear pro­gram. That phrase was miss­ing in Eng­lish ver­sions shared by Iran­ian diplo­mats with jour­nal­ists.

Airstrikes re­port­ed af­ter cease­fire an­nounce­ment

Short­ly af­ter the cease­fire an­nounce­ment, Bahrain, Is­rael, Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates all is­sued warn­ings about in­com­ing mis­siles from Iran. That fire stopped for a time, then hos­til­i­ties ap­peared to restart.

An oil re­fin­ery on Iran’s La­van Is­land came un­der at­tack, ac­cord­ing to Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion. The state broad­cast­er re­port­ed that no one was hurt but did not say who launched the at­tack. The is­land is home to one of the ter­mi­nals that Iran us­es to ex­port oil and gas.

A short time lat­er, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ air de­fens­es fired at an in­com­ing Iran­ian mis­sile bar­rage. Kuwait said Wednes­day three pow­er and wa­ter de­sali­na­tion plants were bad­ly dam­aged af­ter 28 Iran­ian drones were launched at the coun­try. Sau­di Ara­bia said it in­ter­cept­ed nine drones.

More than 1,900 peo­ple had been killed in Iran as of late March, but the gov­ern­ment has not up­dat­ed the war’s toll for days.

In Lebanon, where Is­rael is fight­ing Iran-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants, more than 1,500 peo­ple have been killed, and 1 mil­lion peo­ple have been dis­placed. Eleven Is­raeli sol­diers have died.

In Gulf Arab states and the oc­cu­pied West Bank, more than two dozen peo­ple have died, while 23 have been re­port­ed dead in Is­rael, and 13 U.S. ser­vice mem­bers have been killed. —TEHRAN, Iran (AP)

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Sto­ry by BASSEM MROUE, JON GAM­BRELL, SAMY MAGDY and SAM METZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Gam­brell re­port­ed from Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Magdy from Cairo and Metz from Ra­mal­lah, West Bank. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Edie Led­er­er at the Unit­ed Na­tions, Na­tal­ie Melz­er in Jerusalem, Ab­by Sewell and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Mike Catal­i­ni in Tren­ton, N.J., and Michelle L. Price, Aamer Mad­hani and Joshua Bloak in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.