Middle East crisis live: ‘We have not even begun’, Iran warns US amid escalation in strait of Hormuz

The Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said in a post on X this morning that a “new equation of the strait of Hormuz is in the process of being solidified” and warned that the continuation of the “status quo” was an “intolerable” position for the US to maintain.

Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, added:

double quotation markThe security of shipping and energy transit has been jeopardised by the United States and its allies through the violation of the ceasefire and the imposition of a blockade; of course, their evil will diminish.

We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America; while we have not even begun yet.

Iran imposed a blockade on foreign shipping using the strait of Hormuz soon after the war began with a US-Israeli attack on 28 February which killed the country’s former supreme leader. The US president, Donald Trump, imposed a counter-blockade of ships using Iranian ports on 13 April.

Trump’s so-called “Project Freedom”, which began yesterday, says its aim is to use the US military to guide stranded cargo ships out of the strategic waterway. But in doing so it makes the resumption of war much more likely as Iran’s military central command warned that it would strike any US naval vessel approaching the strait.