- The Guardian
- Issue #2199
Photo: Michael Vadon – flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The United States carried out its third consecutive night of airstrikes against Iran, as President Donald Trump moved to reimpose a naval blockade on Iranian ports.
He also announced (and then un-announced) a “protection” toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, deepening a war that some US allies and international bodies say never should have been fought in the first place.
US Central Command said a five-hour mission struck military targets across Iran. The strikes followed a post by Trump on his Truth Social platform saying the US was “reimposing the blockade” on Iran and would act as “guardian” of the strait, collecting a 20% toll “on every shipment” passing through in exchange for security. Trump claimed the measure targeted only Iranian vessels and their “clients,” while other nations would retain “free and fair use” of the waterway.
The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization rejected Trump’s protection racket outright. A spokesperson said the IMO’s position “remains firm” against mandatory fees for passage through international straits, saying there is no legal basis for such a charge. Shipping industry officials also voiced concern the toll could violate international law, and a Gulf source said Washington had not consulted regional allies before announcing it.
Iran’s armed forces have refused to cede any role to the US in the strait. Iran’s Joint Military Command said the US “will have no role” in determining the waterway’s future, and a spokesman, Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, said Iran would “under no circumstances” allow American intervention “now or in the future.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it disabled two “violating” supertankers in the strait after they ignored warnings and attempted to pass through a “mined route,” accusing Washington of “inciting ships to use an illegal” path.
The fighting’s toll has extended beyond Iran. The United Arab Emirates said one Indian sailor was killed and eight other crew members injured, four critically, after Iranian cruise missiles struck two UAE-flagged tankers, the Mombasa and Al-Bahia, in Omani territorial waters near the strait’s southern passage. The UAE Defence Ministry called the strike a “flagrant attack” and a “serious violation of international law,” and said it reserves the right to respond.
Trump has also threatened to widen the war dramatically. Days before the current round of strikes, he wrote on Truth Social that “orders have already been given” for the US military, ready for a full year, “extendible,” to “completely destroy all of Iran.”
He also threatened “a thousand missiles” against Iran, “followed immediately by thousands more,” if Tehran acted on threats against his life.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, responded that “the era of unilateral agreements has ended,” warning Washington to honour its commitments “or pay the price.” Iranian media also reported that Mojtaba Khamenei, who has assumed the role of Iran’s Supreme Leader following the death of his father, Ali Khamenei, has vowed to avenge his father’s killing.
Criticism of the US escalation has come from close American partners as well as adversaries. Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, writing in the French paper Le Monde, said the peoples of Oman and the Gulf are living through the consequences of a war “that never should have happened,” and called for a permanent settlement guaranteeing freedom of navigation through the strait.
He said the moment requires abandoning nearly five decades of US-backed “containment” policy toward Iran, calling its premise “fundamentally wrong” and “an illusion.” Al-Busaidi said the gravest threats to Gulf security originate not from within the region but from decisions made outside it, “particularly in Tel Aviv,” and called the war itself a “catastrophe” launched without UN authorisation that failed to achieve the goals used to justify it.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was blunter in condemning Trump’s toll plan, calling it “piracy.” Speaking during a visit to the Mauá Institute of Technology in São Paulo, Lula said, “In the past, this was called piracy,” adding that the US, long a self-styled opponent of piracy, should not become a pirate state itself.
He called the toll scheme “undemocratic and uncivilised” and said it was wrong to “exploit a tragedy for financial gain” at others’ expense. Lula also linked the war to rising food prices across the Global South, saying “the cost of war reaches our basic crops, like beans, rice, and tomatoes.”
Trump later told reporters he was backing away from the toll plan, claiming it would be replaced by another scheme to extract revenue from Gulf countries via “billions and billions of dollars” of supposed investment into the US White House flip-flopping from one day to the next leaves shipping companies and governments unsure of what actual US policy is or will be.
Regardless, the US military announced that attacks on Iran would continue and that the naval blockade was still on.
People’s World, using material from Al-Ittihad, the Middle East’s only daily Arabic socialist newspaper
Gaza and the West Bank: Israeli violence continues
Peter Farmer
While the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism continues to wander off reservation, berating universities for not being pro-Israel enough, the IDF continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.
GAZA
Al Jazeera reports that in the 1,000 days since Israel began its latest onslaught, 90 per cent of the strip has been “destroyed,” while 80 per cent has been seized by Israel. At least 73,066 Palestinians have been killed in the enclave. More than 21,500 of those killed in Gaza were children, including 1,022 babies, it added. A further 9,500 people are missing, many believed to be buried under rubble, while 173,514 have been wounded.
Approximately 223,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped by Israel on Gaza during the war – 16 times more than what the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 with the atomic bomb.
Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ has failed to secure Israeli compliance, analysts said. Instead of a gradual withdrawal that the plan envisions, Israel has expanded its control of Gaza, and only a third of the aid trucks it committed to allow into the enclave daily are entering. The IDF has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza since last October’s “ceasefire.”
WEST BANK
Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved a plan to establish 13 new settlements in the central occupied West Bank, a move Palestinian officials say will further fragment the territory and isolate East Jerusalem from its surrounding Palestinian communities.
Israeli attacks on Palestinians continue. On 16 July Israeli settler attacks set farmlands ablaze in Masafer Yatta and burned vehicles near Tulkarem, as Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank continue to face a growing wave of settler violence and land loss.
