Today at 2:16 p.m. PT
By Maegan Vazquez
U.S. military forces fired a missile into a commercial ship in the Gulf of Oman that was attempting to sail toward an Iranian port, Central Command said in a statement, the latest effort to enforce President Donald Trump’s naval blockade designed to weaken Tehran’s economy as peace negotiations continue.
Centcom said on Saturday that the Gambia-flagged merchant vessel was observed “transiting international waters toward an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman and issued more than 20 warnings while informing the vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade.”
The ship, Lian Star, was disabled by a Hellfire missile from U.S. aircraft shot into the ship’s engine room. The military said the ship is no longer transiting to Iran, and did not disclose any casualties resulting from the incident.
The U.S. and Iran have maintained a ceasefire since April 7, and talks to extend it have been ongoing.
Trump recently signaled that he’s moving closer to approving a deal. Trump convened a Situation Room meeting with advisers at the White House on Friday, but has yet to announce a deal.
As talks continue, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Saturday that “the blockade is very much still in place.” He added that “the Strait of Hormuz came up relatively often” during his discussions with foreign leaders gathered in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit.
“It will be an open strait, a toll-free strait that the entire world can use,” he told reporters.
The U.S. military says that with the latest action, its forces have now disabled six commercial vessels and redirected 116 others to enforce its naval blockade, which was launched in mid-April.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that some unspecified aspects of a deal “have been agreed to,” while also outlining what he described as his most important conditions. It was unclear whether Iran had agreed to them all, including the stipulation that the United States would unearth and destroy Iran’s highly enriched uranium.
Trump said Iran must immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway between Iran and Oman that serves as a vital point of transit for the global economy. The president also said Iran must remove any remaining mines in the strait and “agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”
He said that “no money will be exchanged, until further notice,” possibly a reference to calls by Iran for the U.S. to release the country’s frozen assets.
Senior officials from the U.S. and Iran said earlier this week that they had reached a tentative agreement to suspend the months-long war in the Middle East, launched by the U.S. and Israel with strikes on Iran in late February. Trump and his counterparts in Tehran have continued to review the framework in recent days.
The agreement would extend the current ceasefire for another 60 days while the two sides iron out the specifics of a plan to remove enriched uranium from Iran, among other goals, a senior U.S. official previously told The Washington Post.
An Iranian official briefed on the talks said Friday that Tehran still had not given final approval to the agreement but that the two sides appeared close to an announcement.
Natalie Allison and Susannah George contributed to this report.
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