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Source: nyt News • Published: 4/19/2026, 10:48:29 AM
Beirut9:38 a.m. April 19
Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz remained volatile early Sunday after Iran said it was once again closing the vital waterway and two ships reported coming under attack.
Just a day earlier, Iran’s military had declared the strait open to commercial ships after the start of cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon. But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said Saturday that the strait would shut down in retaliation for President Trump’s decision to leave in place a U.S. blockade on ships from Iranian ports.
The instability seemed to already be affecting vessels moving through the narrow passage, a conduit for a significant share of the world’s energy.
On Saturday, India summoned the Iranian ambassador over what it called “a serious incident” involving two Indian-flagged ships that came under fire. TankerTrackers.com, which monitors oil shipments, said two such vessels sailing through the strait had turned around.
A Royal Navy-run shipping monitor, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, said it had received a report that one tanker had come under fire from two Iranian gunships. Another vessel, a container ship, was hit by an “unknown projectile,” it said.
Even as tensions flared in the waterway, the two sides maintained a cease-fire agreement reached last week, while Iran said it was reviewing new U.S. proposals submitted through Pakistan, which hosted peace talks last weekend.
Late Saturday, Iran’s Parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Washington and Tehran had made some progress but remained far from a final agreement. In a speech on state television, he portrayed the cease-fire as a victory for his country and emphasized its “control over the strait.”
Here’s what else we are covering:
Lebanon: Thousands of displaced Lebanese families began making their way back home to Lebanon’s south after a 10-day cease-fire went into effect Friday, and there was heavy traffic again Saturday.
Hezbollah: The head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said Saturday it was willing to cooperate with the Lebanese authorities to end the war with Israel and laid out a series of conditions for a lasting truce, including a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
Energy crisis: Even if the Strait of Hormuz opened fully, it would take weeks for oil and gas prices to recover. Read more ›
As a 10-day cease-fire appeared to hold between Hezbollah and Israel, the leader of the Iran-backed militant group said on Saturday that it was “fully open” to cooperating with the Lebanese government, but laid out difficult conditions for a path forward.
While he celebrated the truce, Naim Qassem, the leader of the Lebanese militant group, said that Hezbollah would keep its fighters at the ready. He listed five conditions for extending the peace with Israel — many echoing longstanding demands by the group that have been difficult to implement.
Mr. Qassem’s conditions included the “permanent cessation” of Israeli attacks on Lebanese targets and Israel’s complete troop withdrawal.
That will be a tall order. Last month, Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of Iran. Israel responded by launching a sweeping ground invasion of Lebanon’s south, a stronghold of the militant group, and has signaled that its forces would occupy much of the territory even after the current conflict.
While Mr. Qassem said that Hezbollah would remain militarily prepared for any Israeli violations of the cease-fire, on Thursday the U.S. State Department stated that, as part of the cease-fire, Lebanon and Israel have reiterated the position that the group, which is also a political party, should not bear arms.
Disarming Hezbollah, however, has been a long-elusive goal. The Lebanese government has no direct control over the militant group, which has resisted surrendering its weapons, and is believed to be more powerful than the country’s military.
After another U.S.-mediated cease-fire ended the previous conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2024, Israel was meant to withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah was supposed to disarm. Neither happened.
“A cease-fire cannot be one-sided; it must be observed by both parties,” Mr. Qassem said. “We will not accept a repetition of 15 months of patience in the face of Israeli aggression while waiting for diplomacy that achieved nothing.”
Mr. Qassem said that peace will depend on the return of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been uprooted by the conflict. But Israel’s continued presence could prolong their displacement.
Roughly 2,300 Lebanese people have been killed in the latest war, according to Lebanese authorities. At least 13 Israeli soldiers have also been killed, along with two civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
Euan Ward and Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s Parliament and the lead negotiator at peace talks, said on Saturday that talks with the United States had made some progress but remained far from a final agreement, with key issues unresolved on both sides. He said any deal would have to proceed on a step-by-step basis with reciprocal actions, adding that the United States must “earn the trust of the Iranian people” and move away from what he described as unilateral and coercive approaches.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also said in his speech to the nation that Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and would respond to any U.S. actions it views as violating the ceasefire, including mine-clearing operations there.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf portrayed the ceasefire in the war as a victory, saying that U.S. and Israel had failed to topple the government or rally international support around the Strait of Hormuz. “When the enemy fails to achieve its objectives, it means it has been defeated,” he said.
The Israeli military said one of its soldiers was killed in southern Lebanon on Friday, during a U.S.–brokered ceasefire. An Israeli military spokesman said the soldier was killed when an explosive detonated in a building, where his unit was searching for Hezbollah weapons. The initial inquiry indicates that the explosive device was not detonated remotely. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
Iran’s declaration on Saturday that it was retaking strict control of the Strait of Hormuz added a new round of uncertainty, and increased peril, to navigation in the critical shipping route.
Less than 24 hours since it declared the strait open to commercial ships after the start of a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, Iran’s military said in a statement that it had returned the strait “to its previous state.” It said that it would continue to exert “strict control” there unless the United States ended its own blockade of Iranian ports.
Before that, 19 ships had passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Friday and early Saturday, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. Dimitris Ampatzidis, an analyst with Kpler, called that a “slight uptick” from before.
“Following the reported attacks on commercial shipping, the risk environment has clearly intensified,” he added.
At the same time, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organization, which is administered by Britain’s Royal Navy, recorded two incidents of vessels being hit. Those ships, and several others, then reversed course.
In the first incident, the U.K.M.T.O. said, gun ships operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a force separate from its regular navy, fired at a tanker without radio warning. The ship’s captain reported that the crew were safe, the U.K.M.T.O. said.
In the second incident, a container ship was “hit by an unknown projectile which caused damage to some of the containers,” the organization said.
The Indian government appeared to acknowledge both ships as sailing under its flag. In a statement Saturday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it had summoned Iran’s ambassador and “conveyed India’s deep concern at the shooting incident earlier today involving two Indian-flagged ships in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran had previously allowed safe passage to Indian merchant vessels, the ministry said.
TankerTrackers.com, a company that monitors global oil shipments, said that the Guards had forced two Indian-flagged vessels sailing through the strait to reverse course.
Kpler’s data said that an Indian-flagged container ship, owned by the French company CMA CGM, turned around as it neared Larak Shari, an island belonging to Iran that has become a checkpoint for Iranian authorities. Kpler’s data only tracks the movement of the ship and does not say whether it was hit.
Kpler’s data showed that three more ships, all belonging to CMA CGM, turned around on Saturday. The company declined to comment.
The Danish shipping giant Maersk said that its vessels would not pass through the strait until it was safe to do so.
“Since the outbreak of the conflict, we have followed the guidance of our security partners in the region, and the recommendation so far has been to avoid transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” the company said in a statement.
At least 20 vessels have been attacked in recent weeks, according to the International Maritime Organization, an arm of the United Nations. In the last seven days, an average of one ship a day has successfully passed through the strait, according to Signal, a maritime analysis firm. Most shipping companies were waiting to see if the current cease-fire would hold, said Maria Bertzeletou, a senior market analyst at Signal.
“The strait is still in a danger zone,” Ms. Bertzeletou said. “The next 72 to 96 hours of actual tanker transits will determine whether confidence returns, or remains constrained.”
Euan Ward reported from Beirut, Lebanon; Sarah Chaayto from Khalde and Saida, Lebanon; and Christina Goldbaum from Borj Qalaouiye, Lebanon.
Thousands of displaced Lebanese returned to the country’s devastated south on Saturday for the second day, as a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be largely holding despite sporadic Israeli strikes.
Lebanon’s coastal highway was still clogged with miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Cars piled high with mattresses and personal belongings moved at a snail’s pace. Some people flashed peace signs from their car windows. Others paused to stretch their legs.
“I didn’t ask anyone to check on my house or send me pictures. I want to do that myself,” said Zakri Zakaria, 55, who had stopped to buy essentials as his family headed home to the southern town of Kfar Tebnit, which was heavily bombarded during the war.
“We are heading there not knowing what we will find — or what we might not,” he said.
The 10-day U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, came into effect in the early hours of Friday morning. The truce has brought a much-needed reprieve for Lebanon after weeks of war, despite uncertainty over whether it will hold.
Roughly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon during the latest war, said the country’s health ministry, warning that the death toll could rise as bodies are recovered from under the rubble. At least 13 Israeli soldiers have also been killed, along with two civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
On Saturday, villages in southern Lebanon were littered with the wreckage of the war. The hulls of burned cars sat along roads. The few people out on the streets were sweeping up shards of glass and using firehoses to clean debris off the pavement.
“We’re not sure if people will come back during the 10-day truce,” said Jad Nouriddine, as he picked up shards of glass from the front of his clothing store in Borj Qalaouiye. The streets were mostly empty. “It still does not feel totally safe,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said this week that Israeli forces, which invaded southern Lebanon during the war, would remain in what he called a “security strip” stretching more than six miles into Lebanese territory.
That could prevent many of the one million people displaced by the fighting from returning to their homes, prolonging a humanitarian crisis and potentially destabilizing the truce. Hezbollah, demanding that Israeli forces withdraw, has warned that it was keeping its “finger on the trigger.”
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had carried out strikes over the past 24 hours on what it described as “terrorists” who had approached areas in southern Lebanon where Israeli troops remain deployed, which the Israeli military said violated the truce.
Israel has also continued artillery fire and demolitions, the military said.
The continued Israeli strikes have added to confusion over the scope of Israel’s military operations under the cease-fire. Israel will “preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks,” according to the State Department. But it will not carry out “offensive military operations,” the agreement says.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, has said Israel would continue to destroy homes in Lebanese towns and villages close to Israel’s northern border. Mr. Katz has previously vowed to level swaths of southern Lebanon, signaling plans for an indefinite occupation there.
Separately, a French soldier with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, was killed and three others were wounded in the country’s south on Saturday, according to President Emmanuel Macron of France, who suggested that Hezbollah was responsible. Hezbollah denied involvement.
UNIFIL said the “deliberate attack” was carried out by “nonstate actors” during a patrol in the town of Ghandouriyeh, as peacekeepers were clearing explosive ordnance from a road leading to a UNIFIL position.
U.N. forces have come under a string of attacks in the latest conflict. Three peacekeepers were killed last month in separate incidents, including one by Israeli tank fire, according to a preliminary U.N. investigation.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
Shipping companies are facing confusion and uncertainty about the status of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway through which a significant share of the world’s energy flows, as they assess mixed messages from officials in Iran and the United States.
But even if the strait fully opens soon — on Saturday, Iran’s military said it would reimpose “strict” control over traffic — it will take weeks for substantial amounts of Persian Gulf oil and gas to reach buyers around the world.
And it will be much longer before companies repair the damage that has been inflicted on one of the world’s most important energy-producing regions.
It is likely to be a long time before a gallon of gasoline costs less than $3 a gallon, as it did before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Shortages of certain products like jet fuel and natural gas may also persist in some countries for weeks or longer.
“We don’t expect oil prices — and therefore pump prices — to go back to prewar levels,” said Arjun Murti, a partner at Veriten, an energy research and investment firm based in Houston.
Think of the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, as a valve. It must be open for energy to flow. But whether shipping companies reposition tankers and producers turn wells back on will depend heavily on whether they believe that the détente between Iran and the United States and Israel is durable.
Spencer Dale, who until recently served as the chief economist of the London-based oil company BP, said that producers who have been forced to turn off their oil and gas wells will be reluctant to restart them “until people have confidence that you have a lasting agreement.”
Traders were hopeful on Friday, when the most commonly cited international price of oil, Brent futures, fell 9 percent to about $90 a barrel, the lowest settlement price since the second week of the war.
But for those who needed an actual tanker full of oil, the price on Friday was higher: almost $99 a barrel, according to Argus Media. That second price, often called the spot price, more closely reflects what companies, such as refiners, pay for commodities — and therefore how much energy will cost the economy as a whole.
“Normally this distinction between the two markets is something for oil geeks and traders to worry about,” said Mr. Dale, now a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “It really matters right now.”
One of the biggest variables for oil prices will be whether shipping companies — and their insurers — believe that the strait is safe.
The status of the waterway remained murky on Saturday after Iran’s military said that the strait would remain “under strict control.” A day earlier, the country’s foreign minister said that the strait was “completely open.” President Trump framed the foreign minister’s announcement as a breakthrough but, complicating matters, Mr. Trump said that the United States would maintain its blockade on ships headed to or from Iranian ports. That has effectively prevented Iran from exporting energy in recent days.
Ships had not returned to the strait in great numbers as of Friday afternoon.
Should shipping from Iran’s neighbors restart, a first order of business will be for the tankers full of energy that have been stuck in the Persian Gulf to leave for countries in Asia and Europe that depend heavily on the region. Empty vessels would also have an opportunity to pick up fuel from storage tanks, making space for newly extracted oil and natural gas. All of that would give the global economy an infusion of energy that it badly needed.
But the war has inflicted the kind of damage that takes months, if not years, to repair. Not only have producers turned off an estimated 10 percent of global oil supply, but more than 80 energy facilities in the region have been damaged, many of them severely, according to the International Energy Agency. Restoring output to prewar levels could take up to two years, Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said this week.
Peter Eavis contributed reporting.
Iranian warships sunk by U.S. and Israeli attacks litter naval harbors along the Persian Gulf coast, but what is sometimes called a “mosquito fleet” lurks in the shadows.
It is a flotilla of small, fast, agile boats designed to harass shipping, and it forms the heart of the naval forces deployed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a force separate from Iran’s regular navy.
These boats, and especially the missiles and drones that the Guards navy can launch from them, or from camouflaged sites onshore, have been the main threat stymying shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran had vowed to keep the strait closed until there was a cease-fire in Lebanon. On Friday, senior Iranian officials made conflicting statements about whether that truce had prompted Iran to open the strait. On Saturday, Iran’s military said the waterway had “returned to its previous state” and was “under strict management and control of the armed forces.”
Welcoming the initial Iranian announcement of the opening, President Trump pronounced the Hormuz situation “over,” while stressing on social media that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a peace deal was reached.
The task of keeping the strait closed would fall to the Guards navy.
“The I.R.G.C. navy works more like a guerrilla force at sea,” said Saeid Golkar, an expert on the Guards and a political science professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“It is focused on asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “So instead of relying on big warships and classic naval battles, it depends on hit-and-run attacks.”
During the war, at least 20 vessels were attacked, according to the International Maritime Agency, a United Nations agency. The Guards navy rarely claimed the attacks, which analysts said were most likely carried out by drones fired from mobile launchers on land, which generate a faint footprint, difficult to trace.
On April 8, after a two-week cease-fire in the war was announced, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more than 90 percent of the regular navy’s fleet, including its main warships, sat at the bottom of the ocean.
An estimated half of the Guards navy’s fast attack boats were also sunk, General Caine said, but did not specify how many. Estimates of the overall number range from hundreds to thousands — it is difficult to count them.
The boats are often too small to appear on satellite images, and they are moored along piers within deep caves excavated along the rocky coastline, ready to be deployed in minutes, analysts said. Their arsenal poses a major threat to commercial ships in the gulf and the strait.
“It remains a disruptive force,” said Adm. Gary Roughead, a retired chief of U.S. Naval Operations. “You never quite knew what they were up to and what their intentions were.”
The Guards land forces were formed soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution because its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, did not trust the regular army to protect the new government.
The Guards navy was added around 1986. The regular navy had proved reluctant during the Iran-Iraq war to attack oil tankers from Iraq’s financial backers, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, said Farzin Nadimi, a specialist on the Guards navy at the Washington Institute, a policy think tank in the U.S. capital.
Eventually those attacks ratcheted up, and the United States then deployed warships to escort tankers. One of them, the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts, almost sank after hitting an Iranian mine. In a subsequent battle, the U.S. Navy scuppered two Iranian frigates and a number of other naval vessels.
Three years later, the Iranians watched as the United States laid waste to the Iraqi military during the first Persian Gulf war.
That combination of events convinced Iran that it could never prevail in a direct confrontation with the U.S. military, so it developed a stealth force to harass ships in the gulf, Mr. Nadimi said.
The Guards navy has an estimated 50,000 men, he said, and divides its forces into five sectors along the gulf, including some presence on many of the 38 gulf islands that Iran controls.
Overall, it has constructed at least 10 well-hidden, fortified bases for attack boats. One, Farur, is the center of operations for the naval special forces, whose equipment, even their sunglasses, are modeled on their U.S. counterparts.
“The I.R.G.C. navy has always believed that it is at the forefront of the confrontation with the Great Satan, and has been in constant friction with the Americans in the gulf,” Mr. Nadimi said.
Iran started by using recreational boats mounted with rocket-propelled grenades or machine guns, naval analysts said. Over the years, it built a range of specially designed small boats, as well as miniature submarines and marine drones. Iran claims that some of those boats can reach speeds of more than 100 knots, or 115 miles per hour, experts said.
The Guards navy also recently developed larger, more sophisticated warships, many of which were targeted in the war, said Alex Pape, the chief maritime expert at Janes, a defense analysis firm. Those damaged included its largest drone carrier, the Shahid Bagheri, a converted container ship that could also launch anti-ship missiles.
To counter a potential swarm of smaller boats, U.S. warships have high-caliber cannons and other weaponry, experts said. Commercial vessels, though, have no way to fend off such attacks.
But the Iranians have never tested swarm attacks of small boats in combat, said Nicholas Carl, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington.
Since Mr. Trump on Monday imposed a naval blockade on ships traveling from Iranian ports, even the most powerful U.S. warships are avoiding spending any time patrolling in the vicinity of the narrow Strait of Hormuz. There is little room to maneuver and almost no warning time to ward off a drone or a missile fired from nearby, experts said.
The U.S. warships enforcing the blockade are likely to remain outside the strait, in the Gulf of Oman or even farther, in the Arabian Sea, where they can monitor shipping traffic but are far more difficult for the Guards to attack, experts said. On Wednesday, Iran warned that it could expand operations into the Red Sea, another key shipping route in the region, through its proxy force in Yemen.
The Guards navy has long played games of cat-and-mouse with the U.S. military inside the gulf. Admiral Roughead remembers that in the 1990s and 2000s, the small attack craft would approach American warships at high speeds and then veer off when they were half a mile away.
Drone warfare has amplified the danger level, he said. Drones are cheap and sometimes hard to detect, but they can inflict significant damage on a warship costing billions of dollars.
Occasionally the Guards navy has fought directly with American or other forces. In early 2016, it captured two small U.S. naval boats. The 10 sailors, filmed on their knees, were later released unharmed. The episode caused an uproar in the United States.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Nazeri, a founder of the Guards naval special forces, who led that attack, achieved cultlike status in Iran. He inspired a reality show on state television, “The Commander,” which ran for five seasons.
Each season, about 30 contestants competed for the chance to become a naval commando. They demonstrated their survival skills or feats of daring like jumping off cliffs into the gulf. After each round, viewers voted for their favorite “hero.”
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