Top Stories — Monday, April 20, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Here’s the latest. — nyt News
- 'Resumption of hostilities': seized ship, vessel attacks push U.S.-Iran ceasefire toward brink — CNBC
- European stocks set to slump as Gulf tanker attacks threaten ceasefire — CNBC
Here’s the latest.
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/20/2026, 11:51:19 AM
Beirut9:42 a.m. April 20
Oil prices were sharply up on Monday after Iran said it would retaliate for a U.S. attack and seizure of an Iranian cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation that put pressure on a fragile cease-fire set to expire this week.
President Trump said American negotiators would arrive in Pakistan on Monday for a second round of peace talks since the two-week truce went into effect on April 8. A White House official said Vice President JD Vance was expected to lead the delegation, though Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to a meeting.
A U.S. Navy destroyer fired on the Iranian cargo ship on Sunday after it defied a weeklong American blockade of Iran’s ports, Mr. Trump said. Marines were searching the ship as officials weighed whether to tow it to Oman, a U.S. official said.
Iran’s armed forces warned that they would soon retaliate against the United States for what they called “armed piracy,” according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.
The attack occurred in the Arabian Sea, south of the Strait of Hormuz, an economically vital waterway through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels. Iran imposed a blockade on the channel in the early days of the war, and the U.S. began blocking traffic to Iranian ports last week.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, climbed more than 6 percent, to around $96 a barrel, after the attack. Oil prices are up by about 33 percent since the war began on Feb. 28.
Here’s what else we are covering:
Pakistan: Pakistan appeared to be readying for a fresh round of talks between the U.S. and Iran, an indication that the talks might go forward even as the two sides sent conflicting public messages. Islamabad, the capital, went on a security lockdown on Sunday night, and officials said they would deploy 10,000 extra security forces in the city.
Energy Prices: The U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, acknowledged on Sunday that gasoline prices in the United States had probably peaked but could remain elevated for months, undermining Mr. Trump’s earlier claim that high fuel prices resulting from the war in Iran would be “short-term.”
Lebanon: Thousands of displaced Lebanese families were making their way home on Sunday, two days after a 10-day cease-fire between Israel and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah went into effect.
Reporting from Washington
A U.S. Navy destroyer in the Arabian Sea repeatedly warned an Iranian-flagged cargo ship to stop over a six-hour period on Sunday before firing on the ship’s engine room and disabling it, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media. Helicopter-borne Marines then swooped down and seized the vessel.
It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week. Previously, 25 other ships intercepted by a Navy flotilla operating outside the Strait of Hormuz had turned around when hailed by Navy crew members, Central Command said.
When the captain of the Iranian vessel, the Touska, ignored multiple radioed American warnings to halt or else, the guided-missile destroyer Spruance, one of more than a dozen Navy warships enforcing the U.S. blockade, ordered the Touska’s crew to evacuate its engine room. The Spruance then fired several rounds from its Mk 45 gun into the ship’s propulsion system as it steamed toward the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran, Central Command said.
The Mk-45 deck gun, located on the Spruance’s bow, can shoot 16 to 20 rounds per minute. The 5-inch-diameter projectiles it fires weigh about 70 pounds each and contain the equivalent of roughly 10 pounds of TNT. The most commonly used fuze can be programmed to detonate the round on impact, or to airburst above its target. The detonation can also follow a slight delay after impact, allowing the shell to penetrate a ship’s hull before exploding.
A boarding party from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit was conducting a search of the vessel and its cargo on Sunday, all of which is now in American custody, a U.S. military official said.
“American forces acted in a deliberate, professional, and proportional manner to ensure compliance,” Central Command’s statement said.
American officials will determine what to do with the disabled vessel once the search is completed, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. One option would be to tow the stricken ship to Oman, independent specialists said on Sunday.
The Touska was one of “several vessels of interest” that U.S. intelligence analysts have been monitoring in recent days, both inside and outside the blockade boundary the U.S. military official said.
“We have eyes on every single one of them,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, told reporters on Friday.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
John Ismay contributed reporting.
In a post on X, U.S. Central Command shared a video it says shows an American warship firing on an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel, the Touska, after it failed to comply with warnings to turn around.
The footage, recorded from the perspective of the warship, focuses on a cargo vessel with features that appear to match the Touska sailing across the open water. A voice is heard telling the crew of the vessel to vacate the engine room, announcing “we’re prepared to subject you to disabling fire.” Some radio chatter is audible as a loud horn blares. Three subsequent clips appear to show the warship firing at the vessel, but each clip cuts before an impact is clearly visible.
The video is composed of several clips and appears to have been recorded at different times throughout the day, based on the lighting and the sun’s position in the sky. The Times was not able to verify when each clip was filmed, or if they were edited together in the order they were recorded.
Oil prices shot higher and stocks sank on Sunday evening after a weekend of renewed conflict around the Strait of Hormuz dampened hope that the waterway might soon reopen.
Earlier on Sunday, a U.S. Navy destroyer attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that President Trump said had tried to evade the U.S. blockade on ships traveling to and from Iranian ports. And on Saturday, a day after Iran’s foreign minister declared the strait open, the country reversed course, reasserting “strict control” over it and attacking two Indian-flagged vessels.
All of that happened after markets closed on Friday, meaning traders are only now digesting those developments.
This is set to be a pivotal week in the war, now in its eighth week, with the cease-fire between the United States and Iran set to expire within days. Mr. Trump said the United States was sending a delegation to Pakistan for further negotiations with Iran, though it was not clear that Iran was on board.
Also on Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged what analysts widely have been predicting: that Americans are unlikely to see gasoline prices return to prewar levels anytime soon.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, climbed more than 6 percent to around $96 a barrel.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, experienced a similar jump, rising to around $88 a barrel.
Investors and analysts are focused on the continued disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that is a vital trading route for oil and natural gas and normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.
Futures on the S&P 500 pointed to a 0.6 percent decline when stocks open for trading in the United States on Monday. The index has risen sharply in recent weeks and ended trading on Friday 3.6 percent higher than before the war began.
Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, were higher. South Korea’s benchmark Kospi, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose about one percent in midday trading.
Gas prices fell on Sunday to a national average of $4.05 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. That is down from a recent high of $4.17 earlier in April. Still, drivers are paying about 36 percent more for gas than they were when the war began.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
Diesel prices have increased even more quickly and stood at $5.56 on Sunday, up 48 percent since the start of the war but down modestly from a week ago.
A U.S. Navy destroyer repeatedly warned an Iranian-flagged cargo ship to stop over a six-hour period on Sunday before firing on the ship’s engine room, disabling the Iran-bound vessel to allow helicopter-borne Marines to board and seize it, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. When the crew of the Touska, the Iranian ship, ignored the American warnings, a destroyer fired its MK 45 gun into the cargo ship’s engine room, Central Command said. On Sunday, Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit were conducting a search of the vessel, which is now in American custody.
The United States military last week extended its blockade on vessels coming in and out of Iranian ports to the waters of the wider world, declaring that it would pursue any ship aiding Iran, regardless of location on the high seas or flag.
The U.S. “will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday, noting that the American troops beyond the Middle East will engage in operations to thwart Iranian shipping.
The extension of the blockade comes as the economically vital Strait of Hormuz remains all but closed to commercial traffic and the two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran nears an end. The move aligns longstanding American economic policies targeting Iran with the current military campaign against it, maritime and military law experts say.
But it raises a host of legal and practical questions.
“War is a messy thing not just on the combat side but under national and international law,” said James R. Holmes, chair of maritime strategy at the Naval War College.
“From a legal standpoint, a blockade is an act of war, so the blockade probably is legal to the extent Operation Epic Fury is,” he said using the name of the U.S. military campaign against Iran.
Since Congress has not declared war against Iran, no formal state of war exists between the United States and the Islamic Republic. But Mr. Holmes noted that “undeclared wars are more the rule than the exception in U.S. history,” with joint resolutions of Congress, United Nations Security Council resolutions and NATO decisions invoked to justify fighting.
“This campaign may be more unilateral than most, but it is not without precedent,” he said.
Under international law, the legality of the blockade is “more ambiguous,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.
For a blockade to be legal, Ms. Kavanagh said, it must be “effective,” meaning that it is both enforceable and enforced. Some would argue that a “‘global blockade’ is not permissible in conception” because it is overly broad, she said.
Still, expansive blockades have taken place throughout history, including during World War II, when states enforced naval blockades worldwide other than in neutral territorial seas. Over the centuries before that, the British blockaded France throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and during the War of American Independence, the colonies and their allies raided British shipping as far away as the Indian Ocean.
Enforcing expansive blockades is difficult, however.
“The seven seas are a big place, and the largest navy or coast guard is tiny by comparison,” Mr. Holmes said. Whether the U.S. blockade ultimately is deemed “effective,” legally speaking, will depend on whether the U.S. has enough assets like ships, aircraft, boarding crews and intelligence gathering to enforce it.
The blockade does not have to be “airtight” to meet the legal test, Mr. Holmes said, and assessing its effectiveness will be tough for outside observers in any case.
Enforcement may also have to be somewhat selective, he suggested.
“Now, it is possible our leadership might quietly let a ship proceed when it suits the national interest,” Mr. Holmes said. “For instance, with a summit coming up between President Trump and General Secretary Xi” — Mr. Trump is to meet with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in May — “Washington might not want to ruffle feathers by obstructing China’s oil imports.”
The expanded blockade is part of a longstanding economic campaign against Iran, but it represents something of a tactical change for the Trump administration.
Earlier in the war, the United States temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil at sea to ease the pressure on global energy prices. And before imposing a blockade on Iranian ports last week, the U.S. allowed Iranian tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz for the same reason.
Now Washington seems to be returning its focus to keeping pressure on Iran.
“The blockade is a wartime extension of existing U.S. economic sanctions against the Iranian regime,” said James Kraska, professor of international maritime law and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. In peacetime, he said, the sanctions were a “powerful tool to weaken the Iranian economy.” Now, he said, the blockade serves as a “kinetic expansion.”
General Caine’s announcement about the expanded naval blockade came one day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced “Operation Economic Fury,” an effort he called the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign. It includes secondary sanctions on institutions internationally, like banks, that have dealings with Iran.
The expanded blockade “marks a notable escalation by the United States,” said Ms. Kavanagh.
Still, she said, it is unlikely to significantly change Iranian calculations.
“For Iran, this war is existential and it is not going to cave easily or quickly,” she said. “Economic pressure may work over the very long term, but Trump seems too impatient for a deal to wait it out.”
The Touska had departed from Malaysia with cargo and crossed the U.S. blockade line before it was intercepted, according to TankerTrackers.com, a company that monitors global oil shipments.
The Touska, an Iranian-owned container ship that President Trump said was fired on by U.S. forces, last broadcast its position six hours ago from a location in the Gulf of Oman around 30 miles off of Iran’s coast, according to data from MarineTraffic, a website that tracks global shipping. The vessel is currently under U.S. sanctions for its ties to Iran’s shipping industry.
President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the U.S. military had attacked an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to maneuver around the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which remains heavily contested amid ongoing negotiations between U.S. and Iran.
“The U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop,” he wrote. “The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom. Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel.”
Trump said the vessel was under U.S. sanctions “because of their prior history of illegal activity” and that U.S. forces were “seeing what’s on board!”
Read the full story at nyt News.
'Resumption of hostilities': seized ship, vessel attacks push U.S.-Iran ceasefire toward brink
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/20/2026, 11:38:06 AM
Fifty days into the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, tensions escalated again after clashes in the Gulf prolonged shipping disruptions and cast doubt on a fragile ceasefire set to expire this week.
On Friday, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz fully open to commercial traffic, sending crude prices tumbling more than 10%. By Saturday, hopes for a fully opened artery quickly unraveled as Tehran reimposed closure of the chokepoint, after President Donald Trump refused to end the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
After a brief pickup in transit attempts on Saturday, shipping traffic in the Gulf stalled once again, with vessels coming under fire mid-passage and being forced to withdraw.
On Sunday, the U.S. Navy fired on and seized an Iranian container ship in the Gulf of Oman. Trump called Iran's actions over the weekend a "total violation" of the truce and renewed threats to strike Iranian power plants and bridges if Tehran refuses a deal.
For markets, it was a reminder of the fragility of the two-week ceasefire, and a deal that could bring a lasting end to the war is still far from done.
U.S. stock futures fell while crude oil prices surged as the U.S. and Iran teetered on the brink of a renewed conflict. West Texas Intermediate futures jumped more than 6% to $89 per barrel shortly after midnight on Monday while and the international benchmark Brent climbed 5.6% to $95.50 a barrel.
"We had the most violent day in the strait on Saturday that we've had since the beginning of this crisis, and things don't seem to be getting any better," said Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context.
"While we keep getting these sell-offs and it keeps seeming like we're about to finally get that, the football — Lucy pulls it away — and we're back to where we started," Johnston told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Monday.
"The strait still isn't flowing, and 13 million barrels a day of production remains shut-in. We're losing it every single day this goes on," said Johnston, who is also a lecturer at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Much will hinge on whether the U.S. and Iran will meet for a second round of peace negotiations in Pakistan later this week, as the ceasefire is set to expire on Tuesday.
Trump said that the American and Iranian negotiators would resume talks in Islamabad on Monday. Iran, however, has denied that it would participate in the meeting, citing what it called Washington's "excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance" and the ongoing blockade as a breach of the ceasefire.
The first round of talks on Apr.12 between Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi failed to yield an agreement. Washington reportedly proposed a 20-year pause on Iranian uranium enrichment, a request that Iranian leaders rejected, insisting on 5 years.
Underlying differences between Washington and Tehran run deeper than the current impasse, said Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute and former member of the U.S. team that negotiated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
"The U.S. side has really not been focused on negotiation per se. What they've been waiting for is Iranian capitulation," Eyre said. "Until and unless the U.S. negotiating team rids itself of the misconception that military victory equals strategic dominance, we're not going to get to a solution."
Eyre warns that the latest flashpoints risk taking the conflict a leg higher in the near term. "There's an escalatory predisposition here where both sides could escalate and go back into a shooting war, which no one wants."
While a productive round of negotiations in Islamabad remains a possibility, it is "unfortunately more likely to just go the other way — a resumption of hostilities," Eyre added.
The economic costs of the conflict are mounting as the Strait of Hormuz — which normally carries roughly one-fifth of global oil supply — has been effectively closed for nearly two months.
"The crisis is one of lost time and lost production," Johnston said, estimating supply disruptions of around 13 million barrels of crude, condensates, and natural gas liquids per day.
"That cumulative effect has already breached above half a billion barrels," he said, warning that even an imminent deal announcement would not immediately unwind the damage.
Even if a deal is reached, experts warn that it could take months to claw back the supply lost over recent weeks of closures, keeping oil prices elevated for longer.
"If we actually got the strait open, we would probably see another $10 to $20 a barrel immediate rout because of the speculative hot money. But at the end of the day, we'd dump on day-one and then claw ourselves back higher — probably into the $80 and $90 — to reflect the [oil] scarcity that's ongoing."
Crude prices have surged over 30% since the war broke out, with Brent briefly topping $110 a barrel for the first time in roughly four years, according to LSEG data, before easing on hopes for a breakthrough.
More than 500 million barrels of crude and condensate have been knocked out of the global market — the largest energy supply disruption in modern history, according to Kpler data.
Despite the severity of the energy disruption, U.S. equity markets have remained largely resilient, as investors shrugged off the conflict as a blip that will be resolved relatively quickly.
Vishnu Varathan, head of macro research at Mizuho Bank, however, cautioned that the optimism may be premature. "We can't get prematurely euphoric about any deal signed, because the lingering adverse effects mean we don't get out of this quickly."
The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that global growth will inevitably take a hit even if the ceasefire holds, citing uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz as a persistent drag, pushing up energy costs and inflation.
"It's clear we're not going back to the Goldilocks scenario," said Brian Arcese, portfolio manager at Foord Asset Management, referring to a scenario of stable growth and low inflation. The longer the Strait remains closed, the greater the risk to the global economy, he said, although the actual extent of the damage can shift on "a daily and weekly basis."
European stocks set to slump as Gulf tanker attacks threaten ceasefire
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/20/2026, 11:12:10 AM
LONDON — European stocks are expected to fall at the start of the new trading week on fears that a re-escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions over the weekend could derail the fragile ceasefire between the two countries.
The U.K.'s FTSE 100 index is seen opening 0.34% lower, with Germany's DAX down 1.1%, and France's CAC 40 and Italy's FTSE MIB both 1% lower, according to data from IG.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that a U.S Navy guided missile destroyer had fired on and disabled an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman before Marines boarded and seized the vessel.
The seizure is an escalation of the U.S.' blockade of the strait and comes after Iran fired upon commercial vessels attempting to transit the maritime passage earlier Sunday.
Since last week, the U.S. has been operating a naval blockade of ships entering and exiting Iranian ports. Iran views the ongoing blockade as a breach of the ongoing ceasefire, which it cites this as one of its reasons for calling off the expected negotiations on Monday in Islamabad.
Trump warned on Sunday he would "knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran" if Tehran did not agree to Washington's terms to end the conflict. The fragile ceasefire between the two countries will expire this week.
Asia-Pacific markets were trading mostly higher overnight but U.S. futures fell early Monday. The declines come after a winning week for Wall Street, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbing to all-time highs last week following a ceasefire between Iran and Lebanon.
Iran had declared that the Strait of Hormuz was reopened, but by Saturday, vessel traffic through that key shipping lane was restricted again, with state media saying the U.S. "did not fulfill their obligations."
There are no major earnings or data releases in Europe on Monday.
— CNBC's Justina Lee and Fred Imbert contributed to this market report.
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