Iran keeps US waiting for a response

TEHRAN / WASHINGTON / BEIRUT: Iran questioned the seriousness of American diplomacy on Saturday in the wake of renewed naval clashes in the Gulf, while keeping Washington waiting for a response to its latest negotiating position.

A state of relative calm prevailed around the Strait of Hormuz, after days of sporadic flare-ups, as the United States waited for Iran’s response to its latest proposals to end more than two months of fighting and begin peace talks.

US President Donald Trump had said on Friday that he was expecting Iran’s response to Washington’s latest proposal for a deal to extend a fragile truce and launch peace talks — “supposedly tonight”.

But if Iran did send Pakistani mediators a response, there was no public sign of it, and Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called into question the reliability of the US leadership in a call with his Turkish counterpart.

“The recent escalation of tensions by American forces in the Persian Gulf and their numerous actions in violating the ceasefire have added to suspicions about the motivation and seriousness of the American side in the path of diplomacy,” he said, according to an Iranian account of the call published by the ISNA news agency.

In an incident on Friday, a US fighter jet fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers that Washington accused of challenging its naval blockade of Iran’s ports.

An Iranian military official told local media the country’s navy had responded “to American terrorism with strikes” and that “the clashes have now ceased”.

The latest incident came after a previous flare-up overnight Thursday to Friday in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital international sea lane that Iran is seeking to control to extract tolls from foreign vessels and wield economic leverage over the US and its allies.

In a related development, a CIA assessment indicated that Iran would not suffer severe economic pressure from a US blockade of Iranian ports for about another four months, according to a US official familiar with the matter, suggesting that US leverage over Tehran remains limited as the two sides seek to end a conflict that has been unpopular with US voters.

A senior intelligence official characterised as false the “claims” about the CIA analysis, which was first reported by the Washington Post.

The official added that the blockade “is inflicting real, compounding damage — severing trade, crushing revenue, and accelerating systemic economic collapse”.

Bahrain’s interior ministry said on Saturday that the country’s security services had dismantled an organisation accused of links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and arrested 41 of its suspected members.

Bahrain, which houses a major US military base, was hard-hit by Iranian attacks on the Gulf, launched in response to US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “In accordance with previous investigations carried out by the prosecutor’s office in cases of espionage on behalf of foreign entities and sympathy for Iranian aggression, the security services dismantled an organisation linked to the Revolutionary Guards,” the ministry said in a statement.

Britain said on Saturday it was deploying its warship HMS Dragon to the Middle East in preparation for a potential multinational effort to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz once conditions allow.

HMS Dragon, an air defence destroyer, was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean in March, shortly after the start of the Iran war, to help defend Cyprus. “The pre-positioning of HMS Dragon is part of prudent planning that will ensure that the UK is ready, as part of a multinational coalition jointly led by the UK and France, to secure the Strait, when conditions allow,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Ministry of Defence said.

The Israeli onslaught in Lebanon continued as the authorities reported eight people killed in Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, with more raids targeting a highway south of Beirut outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds and far from the centre of ongoing fighting.

The fresh attacks came in spite of a three-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a series of Israeli strikes across the south, including one on the town of Saksakiyeh.

The health ministry said that raid “resulted in an initial toll of seven martyrs, including a girl, and 15 wounded, including three children”.

The ministry reported that another Israeli strike on a motorbike in the city of Nabatieh hit “a Syrian national and his 12-year-old daughter”.

“After they managed to move away from the site of the first strike, the drone attacked a second time,” killing the father, the ministry said, adding the drone then targeted the girl “directly for a third time”. The girl was undergoing life-saving surgery, it added.

The Israeli military said it had struck more than 85 Hezbollah infrastructure sites in the past 24 hours.

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah on Saturday warned of “a new phase, in which the resistance [Hezbollah] will not accept a return to pre-March 2”.

Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had targeted troops in northern Israel with a drone in response to the continued strikes. In addition to its drone attack in northern Israel, the group also claimed attacks on Israeli military targets inside Lebanon using rockets and drones.

On the other hand, US Central Command said that 58 commercial vessels have been redirected and four others disabled since the naval blockade of Iranian ports began on April 13.

Additionally, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard has threatened to target US sites in the region and “enemy ships” if its tankers come under fire, Iranian media reported.