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The US Navy is attempting to prevent Iranian and Iranian-approved vessels from entering and exiting the Strait, while Iran prevents all other vessels from entering and exiting the Strait. The only vessels moving through the Strait at this time are Iranian and Iranian-approved vessels. These Iranian-approved vessels are acceding to Iran’s protection racket and using Iran’s unilaterally imposed traffic separation scheme that forces vessels into Iranian territorial waters. Very few ships are transiting the Strait other than the ships moving through Iran’s territorial waters. Only one ship transited the Strait on April 12 and did not use the Iranian-approved shipping lanes by skirting the southern edge of the Iran-declared hazardous area. US President Donald Trump said on April 12 that the US Navy will “interdict every vessel” that has paid Iran for passage and indicated that enforcement of the blockade will begin soon. Iran has used threats of attacks and a limited number of mines to declare a “hazardous area” across the entire Strait of Hormuz except for Iranian territorial waters, where Iran then imposes fees. The US Navy has deployed ships to clear the remaining naval mines and restore freedom of navigation. Some Gulf countries are also supporting mine-clearing efforts, according to Trump. Two US Navy destroyers transited the Strait on April 11 to set conditions for clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy threatened the destroyers but did not attack them. The IRGC Navy has threatened that any military vessels in the Strait will be subject to a “decisive response.”
The United States and Iran did not reach an agreement during talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 11 and 12. Two Iranian officials speaking to the New York Times on April 12 stated that US-Iran talks failed to reach an agreement over Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), Iran’s “control” over the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s demand that $27 billion in frozen revenues held abroad be released. The two officials stated that the United States demanded that Iran immediately open the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic, but Iran countered that it would only allow unfettered traffic in the Strait after a final peace deal. The lack of a public, mutually agreed-upon document establishing the ceasefire requirements makes adherence to the ceasefire difficult to establish, but US officials said after the two-week ceasefire agreement that the ceasefire required Iran to reopen the Strait. The officials added that the US delegation demanded that Iran “hand over or sell” its entire HEU stockpile, to which Iran made an unspecified counterproposal that the United States did not accept. The officials stated that the US side refused Iran’s requests for war reparations from frozen oil revenue in various countries. US President Donald Trump emphasized on April 12 that Iran’s delegation did not make compromises on its nuclear program, but that he believed Iran would return to negotiations. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was the head of the Iranian delegation and has accumulated substantial power within the Iranian system in the last year, blamed the US side for the failure of the negotiations and stated that the United States must “earn” Iran’s trust, however.
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