The United States military command that oversees the Middle East (CENTCOM) has said that two of its ships have travelled through the Strait of Hormuz, a claim swiftly denied by Iran. On Saturday, the command said that the two destroyers, the USS Frank E Peterson and USS Michael Murphy, had “transited the Strait of Hormuz and operated in the Arabian Gulf as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps” (IRGC). In a statement, US Admiral Brad Cooper hailed the ships’ presence in the strait as a turning point in the US and Israeli war against Iran, which began on February 28.
The passage would represent a major shift. Control of the strait has been a major point of contention, given that a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas passes through the waterway, as well as large amounts of fertiliser and other goods. Iran effectively closed the narrow strait, save for pre-approved ships, in the wake of the initial US-Israel attacks in February.
That, in turn, snarled both commercial and military traffic and sent global fuel prices soaring. On Saturday, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters swiftly denied the US statement. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Maria Sultan, the director general of the Pakistan-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, said that, if the US ships had indeed moved freely through the strait, it would have to have been with Tehran’s permission.
The back and forth came as US and Iran held negotiations in Islamabad. The occasion included a historic face-to-face meeting between the US delegation — led by Vice President JD Vance — and the Iranian delegation, helmed by Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The talks represented the highest-level meetings of their kind since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
They were launched after the US and Iran reached a preliminary ceasefire on Tuesday. Both sides, however, have offered diverging accounts of the conditions for the negotiations. Entering into the talks, they remained at odds on key points, including the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and whether Israel’s invasion and its ongoing attacks in Lebanon were subject to the initial ceasefire deal.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem said that Iranian officials appear to believe that an agreement had been reached for Israel to stop bombing Beirut and its suburbs. However, such an agreement has not been officially announced. Meanwhile, Hashem pointed out that Iranian sources and news organisations have described the US as making “excessive demands”.
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