Iran War Live Updates: Trump Says Iran to Allow More Oil Ships Through Strait of Hormuz

Tehran3:23 p.m. March 30 Tel Aviv2:53 p.m. March 30 Iran War Live Updates: Trump Says Iran to Allow More Oil Ships Through Strait of Hormuz President Trump characterized the move as a “sign of respect” even as fighting between Israel and Iran continued and the war dragged into its second month. President Trump said on Sunday that Iran had agreed to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route, casting Tehran’s decision as a sign that negotiations to end the war were underway. But fighting continued on Monday morning with Israel and Iran exchanging strikes, the Israeli military said, as the war entered its second month. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, Mr. Trump said that Iran would permit the ships’ passage starting Monday as a “sign of respect” to the United States. Iranian forces have blockaded the waterway — through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil transits — in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli strikes, sending the price of oil climbing by 56 percent since the war began. It was not clear who the 20 cargo ships belonged to, or where they were headed. China and India are among the largest buyers of Iranian crude. Iran allowed about 10 ships to pass through the strait last week, a step that Mr. Trump also portrayed as progress. Even as Mr. Trump pointed to the move as a sign of progress toward a diplomatic resolution to the fighting, hundreds of U.S. Special Operations forces were said to have arrived in the Middle East, according to two U.S. military officials, giving Mr. Trump new options to escalate the war. The commandos, including Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, join thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers in a buildup that is intended to provide the president with additional military options, the officials said on Sunday. The commandos have not been assigned specific missions, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. Here’s what else we’re covering: Pakistan talks: Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey convened on Sunday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for further discussions aimed at ending the war. The United States, Israel and Iran were not part of the talks, and it was unclear whether any progress was made. Mediators from Pakistan had passed along to Iran a 15-point U.S. plan to end the conflict. But the speaker of Iran’s parliament accused Mr. Trump on Sunday of engaging in a front of diplomacy while “secretly planning a ground invasion.” Read more › Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had ordered his forces to increase the territory they control in southern Lebanon, adding to fears among many Lebanese of a long-term military occupation of the area. Lebanon’s president has denounced Israel’s campaign there against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia. The Israeli military said that at least six of its soldiers were injured on Sunday, three of them severely, amid the clashes with Hezbollah. Peacekeeper killed: The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, condemned an attack that killed an Indonesian member of the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Sunday. The Indonesian government said that three other Indonesian peacekeepers had been injured in the episode, which involved “indirect artillery fire” near their post. The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said on Monday that it did not know the origin of the projectile and was investigating. President Trump on Sunday suggested that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks, as he sought to show progress in a war that has entered a second month. “We’ve had regime change,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.” The president appeared to be referring to Iran’s decision to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, which he called a “sign of respect” to the United States and an indication that talks on ending the war were underway. In public, however, Iranian leaders have not confirmed that they are participating in talks with U.S. officials, and their de facto blockade of the strait, a vital route for oil shipments, has rattled global markets. The United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many top Iranian leaders. But a war that Mr. Trump initially predicted would last weeks and would create the conditions for Iran’s elite military forces to “surrender to the people” has shown little sign of letting up as more civilians are killed, and as Iran’s retaliatory attacks disrupt daily life across the Middle East. Though the United States and Israel have killed a string of Iran’s leaders after Ayatollah Khamenei, its pillars of power — chiefly top clerics and the hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — remain in place. Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader, was chosen to succeed him. And there has been no sign of any popular Iranian movement to overthrow the government, as Mr. Trump had once signaled was an objective. Some Iran experts and politicians from the country’s reformist movement argue that the killings have ushered more hard-line figures into top posts. The slain head of Iran’s National Security Council, Ali Larijani, was seen as more pragmatic than the man appointed to replace him, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. The new commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, is also seen as more radical than his predecessor, and the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader was seen as a victory by hard-liners against backers of more moderate candidates. Mr. Trump’s comments on Sunday appeared to be another sign of him scaling back his objectives in the war. The Iranian leaders the United States was dealing with now, he said, are “different people than anybody’s dealt with before.” “I would consider that regime change,” he said, adding, “You can’t do much better than that.” Since the start, Mr. Trump has not laid out a clear objective for the war with Iran, nor has he been explicit about what victory would look like. Weeks before ordering the bombing campaign, he was asked by reporters if he wanted regime change in Iran. He said it seemed “like that would be the best thing that could happen.” But by mid-March, Mr. Trump did not mention regime change at all when he announced that he was considering “winding down” military operations in Iran. In recent days, he has appeared to grow frustrated with the extent to which the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has failed to keep the war from spiraling across the region. One key irritant is that Iranian attacks have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil climbing by 56 percent since the war began. Erika Solomon contributed reporting. Two Chinese-owned commercial vessels successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, according to the ship-tracking platform MarineTraffic, which called it “the first confirmed crossing by a major container carrier since the start of the conflict.” The ultra-large container vessels crossed the strait at around 9 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time after abandoning initial attempts on Friday. Both ships are Malaysia-bound. MarineTraffic said the successful transit could “signal a potential shift in conditions for commercial shipping” after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran prompted Tehran to restrict access to the strait, a crucial conduit for oil and gas. Two members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon were killed in an “explosion of undetermined origin,” according to a United Nations report seen by The New York Times. Several other peacekeepers were injured in the attack, the report said. It comes after the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, condemned an attack that killed an Indonesian member of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Sunday. The cause of the deaths was not immediately clear. A oil refinery in the northern Israeli city of Haifa was struck during an Iranian missile attack on Monday morning, according to Israel’s fire and rescue service. Footage broadcast on Israeli television, as well as photos distributed by the Israeli authorities, showed a blaze at the site. According to the fire and rescue service, falling shrapnel struck a large container containing fuel, leading firefighters to rush to the site to extinguish the blaze. There were no reports of casualties. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was “not at all happy that people in other countries are facing difficulties due to fuel and food prices,” prompted by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. He urged those countries to press Israel and the United States to end their attacks on Iran. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, commented on the 15-point U.S. plan to end the conflict, saying the U.S. had “excessive, unrealistic, and unreasonable demands.” He said the meeting of regional foreign ministers in Pakistan on Sunday to discuss efforts to end to the war was “commendable,” but he stressed that Iran was not involved. “Iran was attacked in the middle of a diplomatic process, and this has happened for the second time within nine months,” he said, referring to the 12-day war last June and the current war. Iranian state media has confirmed Israel’s killing of Alireza Tangsiri, who commanded the naval forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and who was one of the architects of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, released a condolence message in response to his killing from the country’s police chief. “Each drop of the pure blood of these dear martyrs will strengthen our resolve more than ever to continue along the sacred path toward the final victory,” the message said. Ishaq Dar, the Pakistani foreign minister, is set to visit Beijing on Tuesday in hopes of securing Chinese support for a framework in which Pakistan would host talks between the United States and Iran, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said. Pakistan hosted discussions on Sunday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, as regional powers search for a way to end the war. The price of crude oil is up 3 percent in early trading, and the renewed rise in energy costs has intensified worries about a surge in inflation around the world. Those fears can be seen in government bond yields, which have mostly climbed over the past month, in anticipation of a series of interest rate increases by major central banks. But U.S. Treasury yields reversed course on Monday, slipping slightly, which broke the recent pattern. Analysts at Goldman Sachs argued on Monday that markets may be “mispricing” the potential economic damage of persistently high energy prices, which could spur central banks to cut rates, making the case for lower rates later this year “especially compelling.” Price of Brent Crude Oil An airstrike hit the industrial facilities of the Tabriz Petrochemical Complex, two semiofficial news outlets said, sparking a fire at the site in northwestern Iran early Monday. The strike is the latest in a string of attacks on Iran’s critical infrastructure that have hit power plants, a water reservoir, steel production and universities. Officials from the Tabriz complex said that the fire caused by the strike had been contained, according to the Mehr news agency, and said no hazardous materials had been leaked. A statement from the company, cited by the Tasnim news agency, said “engineers are currently conducting a detailed assessment of the technical aspects and the extent of the damage. Indonesia’s foreign ministry condemned the death of one of its peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Sunday and called for a thorough investigation. The peacekeeper was killed and three others were injured after artillery was fired near the the position of the Indonesian contingent of a United Nations peacekeeping force during “reported hostilities between the Israeli military and armed groups,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. At least six Israeli soldiers were injured, three of them severely, in Lebanon on Sunday, the Israeli military announced. Israel has been fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in a sweeping ground offensive in the country’s south. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have suggested that Israel is aiming to widen a military buffer zone in southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from its border. Many Lebanese fear the campaign could lay the groundwork for a prolonged Israeli occupation of the territory. The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, condemned an attack that killed an Indonesian peacekeeper and critically injured another on Sunday as a result of an explosion inside their location post in south Lebanon. Mr. Guterres said this was one of several incidents jeopardizing the safety of peacekeepers in the past 48 hours. He urged all parties to “uphold their obligations under international law.” Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, said on Monday morning that the conflict overseas was driving up fuel prices at home and announced that the government would halve the fuel tax for three months “to save you money when you fill up.” He added that a national fuel security plan had been released and that officials were working with states and territories to keep supplies flowing. President Trump said on Sunday night that Iran had agreed to release 20 more cargo ships of oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, in what the president insisted was a “tribute” to the United States and a “sign of respect.” Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a weekend spent in Florida, Mr. Trump cast Iran’s decision to allow free passage for the ships as a sign that negotiations were underway toward ending the military conflict in the region, in what he said were direct and indirect talks. But to many outside experts, Iran’s ability to turn the spigot of oil deliveries on and off simply demonstrates its power to control the narrow, 21-mile-wide passage. Previously Mr. Trump had said he did not care much about what went through the strait because most of the oil goes to customers in Asia and Europe, and very little to the United States. It was not clear where the 20 cargo ships were headed. China and India are major buyers of Iranian oil. The ships may also belong to Gulf Arab states. Last week, the Iranians allowed about 10 ships to transit the strait, a development that Mr. Trump also hailed as a sign of progress. The movement of the oil is an issue that has arisen only after the United States and Israel began their military action on Feb. 28. The core of the negotiations center on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, the size and range of its arsenal of missiles and, based on Mr. Trump’s earlier goals, the freedom of the Iranian people to protest without being shot in the streets by the government. Mr. Trump insisted to the reporters, however, that he had already achieved “regime change” in Iran because the leaders in place when the attacks on the country began have been killed, starting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. “I think we’ve had regime change,’’ said Mr. Trump. “It truly is regime change.” But the government, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the nation’s top clerics, remains in place. Only the leaders have changed. Mr. Trump made no announcements of a face-to-face meeting between American and Iranian negotiators. Last week, the administration had hoped to send Vice President JD Vance to Pakistan, to lead a delegation to discuss peace terms with Iranian leaders. But the Iranians have insisted that the United States must agree to reparations for attacking the country, acknowledge Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and lift sanctions imposed by a series of American presidents. Several hundred U.S. Special Operations forces have arrived in the Middle East, joining thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers in a deployment meant to give President Trump additional options to expand the monthlong war with Iran, two U.S. military officials said on Sunday. The commandos, including Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, have not yet been assigned specific missions, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But as specialized ground troops, they could be deployed to help safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed. Or they could be deployed as part of a mission to try to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s oil hub in the northern Persian Gulf. Alternatively, they could be used in a mission aimed at Iran’s highly enriched uranium at the Isfahan nuclear site. The commandos join 2,500 Marines and another 2,500 sailors, who recently arrived in the region. Altogether there are more than 50,000 American troops in the Middle East now, roughly 10,000 more than usual, as Mr. Trump decides on his next step in the war. While it is still unclear just what the Marines, from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, will be charged with, U.S. officials say the president is weighing how to try to open the strait. The narrow waterway, through which around 20 percent of the world’s oil usually traverses, has been largely closed because of attacks by Iranian forces who are retaliating against the U.S. and Israeli war on their country. Usually there are around 40,000 American troops scattered among bases and on ships at any time around the region, including in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. But as Mr. Trump has escalated the war in Iran, that number has reached more than 50,000, according to a U.S. military official. The number of troops no longer includes the 4,500 aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, however. That ship has been hobbled by constant mishaps, including a fire that broke out in the laundry. The Ford withdrew from the region on March 23 and sailed to Crete. On Friday it arrived in Croatia. It remains unclear where it is headed next. Last week, the Pentagon also ordered about 2,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East to give Mr. Trump additional military options. The location of the Army paratroopers is not public, the military official said. But they will be within striking distance of Iran. The paratroopers could also be used on Kharg Island, where U.S. warplanes bombed more than 90 military targets earlier this month. Or they could be deployed for other ground operations in conjunction with the Marines. But military experts caution that even 50,000 troops, many of them at sea, are a small number for any kind of major land operation. Israel used more than 300,000 troops for its operations in the Gaza Strip that began in October 2023. The U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 was close to 250,000 at the beginning. At almost a third the size of the continental United States, Iran has around 93 million people. Taking, let alone holding, a country of its size and complexity and weaponry with 50,000 troops is not doable, military experts say. A power and water desalination plant in Kuwait was attacked by Iran on Sunday evening, according to Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy, killing a worker from India. There was significant damage to a service building at the site, the ministry said. Earlier Sunday, Kuwait’s defense ministry spokesman said that 14 ballistic missiles and 12 drones had been launched within the country’s airspace within the past 24 hours. A base affiliated with the military was targeted in one of the attacks, and 10 military personnel were injured. There was also damage to a warehouse of a private logistics company, the ministry of defense spokesman said. Stock prices continued their steady descent on Sunday evening, with futures on the S&P 500, which allow investors to bet on the market before exchanges open for trading on Monday, falling roughly 0.5 percent. The index fell 2.1 percent for the week through Friday, its fifth straight week of losses. Sunday’s stock drop came as oil prices rose, with Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rising past $115 per barrel, up roughly 2.5 percent. Diplomats from around the Mideast convened in Pakistan on Sunday for talks aimed at ending the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran that showed no signs of abating as it entered its second month. The U.S., Israel and Iran were not part of the talks, and it was unclear whether any progress was made. The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, called the American 15-point plan to end the war, passed to Iran via Pakistan, an attempt to achieve through diplomacy what the United States had failed to achieve through force. Iranian forces were “waiting for American soldiers to enter on the ground so they can set them on fire,” he added. Here’s what else happened on Sunday: Iran: The U.S.-Israeli bombardment of Tehran continued on Sunday, a day after the Iranian capital suffered what the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said was one of the heaviest days of strikes since the war began on Feb. 28. Among the sites hit was the Tehran headquarters of Al Araby TV, a network owned by a Qatari company, according to Iranian news agencies. The network said that the building housing the headquarters also contained several other businesses and that the strike had injured 10 people. U.S.-Israeli strikes also hit a southern Iranian port, killing at least five people, Iranian state media said. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Khondab Heavy Water Complex in Iran’s Markazi Province had been severely damaged and was no longer operational, after Iranian reports that it had been attacked on Friday. The complex did not contain any declared nuclear material, and there was no radiation risk, the agency said. Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had ordered his forces to increase the territory they control in southern Lebanon, saying that Israel was “determined to fundamentally change the situation” on the Israeli-Lebanese border. President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon has denounced the Israeli operation in southern Lebanon, particularly the destruction of bridges there, as dangerous escalations and a violation of Lebanese sovereignty. Hundreds of people gathered in the rain in Beirut to mourn three Lebanese journalists killed in Israeli airstrikes over the weekend. An airstrike on an ambulance in Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon, also killed a paramedic, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization. He said that 51 other Lebanese health workers had been killed since the start of Israel’s war with Hezbollah. Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia intercepted and destroyed 10 drones, its defense ministry said. The kingdom’s foreign minister met with his counterparts from Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan in Islamabad as part of Pakistan’s efforts to mediate the war. Israel: Iran fired a series of ballistic missiles toward Israel. No casualties were reported, though the Israeli military said fragments from missile interceptions fell on an industrial park in southern Israel, causing a fire. Israeli police prevented two senior Roman Catholic leaders from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, prompting outrage from church officials and world leaders. Israeli police late on Sunday said they were instituting a “limited” plan for prayer at the church, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had instructed the authorities to give the Latin Patriarch “full and immediate access” to the church and to allow him “to hold services as he wishes.” An Israeli soldier from the United States was killed in southern Lebanon in an incident that injured three other soldiers, the Israeli military said. It did not provide further details. Israeli police officers prevented two senior Roman Catholic leaders in Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Palm Sunday, inciting a wave of outrage from local church officials and some world leaders at the start of the holiest week on the Christian calendar. The Israeli police said they blocked the leaders — Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Rev. Francesco Ielpo, the official guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — from the church out of concerns for their safety. The church is among the holy sites of all religions in Israel that have been largely closed to the public since the war with Iran began. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land said in a statement that it was “the first time in centuries” that senior church officials had been unable to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass at the church. According to tradition, the church was built on the site in Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was both crucified and buried. The statement said the two church leaders were traveling privately and not part of “a procession or ceremonial act” when they were barred from going to the church. The statement described the episode as a “grave precedent.” Dean Elsdunne, an Israeli police spokesman, said the church leaders had been blocked from the building because the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem’s Old City, would be difficult to access in an emergency. “The narrow alleys of the Old City, where emergency and rescue vehicles cannot quickly arrive to a scene or victims, means a single incident can become a tragedy,” he said. World leaders including Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, condemned the decision. Ms. Meloni called it an “offense” to the faithful, while Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, said he had summoned the Israeli ambassador to discuss the matter. President Emmanuel Macron of France said on social media post that Sunday’s episode joined “a concerning sequence of violations of the status of the holy sites in Jerusalem.” And the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, described the episode as an “unfortunate overreach already having major repercussions around the world.” Small religious gatherings have been permitted across Israel despite security precautions, Mr. Huckabee said, making the decision to deny entry to the two Catholic leaders “difficult to understand or justify.” The closures of holy sites have stemmed from a lack of sheltered spaces amid frequent missile attacks from Iran, according to Israeli officials. Earlier this month, shrapnel from an Iranian missile that fell in the Old City of Jerusalem came close to hitting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, was also hit by debris. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the decision to block the church officials had been made “out of special concern” for their safety, and said there was no malicious intent. The prime minister’s office added that Israeli officials would work to “enable church leaders to worship at the holy site in the coming days,” citing the coming Easter holiday. On Sunday night, Israeli police said they were instituting a “limited” plan for prayer at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher after a situational assessment between the Israeli authorities and a representative of the Latin Patriarchate but did not provide additional details. Mr. Netanyahu, in a post on social media on Sunday night, said he had instructed the authorities to give Cardinal Pizzaballa “full and immediate access” to the church and to allow him “to hold services as he wishes,” despite safety concerns. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he called Cardinal Pizzaballa following Sunday’s episode to “express his great sorrow” over its handling.