Top Stories — Monday, April 20, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Iran War Live Updates: Oil Prices Rise as Iran Vows Retaliation for Cargo Ship Attack — nyt News
- The Iran War Sent Shock Waves Through Asia That Are Likely to Spread — nyt News
Iran War Live Updates: Oil Prices Rise as Iran Vows Retaliation for Cargo Ship Attack
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/20/2026, 2:04:31 PM
Beirut11:40 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.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said that there are “no plans” for a next round of peace talks in Pakistan, even as President Trump said that U.S. negotiators would arrive in Islamabad on Monday for a second round of talks. The spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said during a weekly news conference that no decision had been made and accused the U.S. of engaging in actions that in “no way demonstrate seriousness in pursuing a diplomatic process,” according to Iran’s state news agency, IRNA.
Iranian officials have not confirmed their participation in a second round of talks, but U.S. and Pakistani officials are still moving ahead with preparations for negotiations they say will take place later this week in Islamabad. The Serena Hotel, which hosted the first round, has been cleared once again, and with dozens of checkpoints across the city, officials appear focused on “when,” not “if.”
Tensions remained high four days into the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli military said it had struck a loaded rocket launcher outside the zone it occupies in southern Lebanon, calling it an imminent threat. Hezbollah said an Israeli convoy on Sunday triggered explosives that its militants had previously planted in the region.
Israel has said it will continue carrying out what it describes as defensive strikes during the truce and demolishing buildings in the zone it has invaded.
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 wobbled on Monday after a weekend of renewed conflict around the Strait of Hormuz dampened hope that the waterway might soon reopen.
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.
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.
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 decline of about half a percent 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.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad index that tracks the region’s largest companies, fell about 1 percent.
But stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, posted gains. South Korea’s benchmark Kospi, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose a bit less than 1 percent.
Gas prices fell on Monday to a national average of $4.04 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.
Diesel prices also stood at $5.53 on Monday, up 47 percent since the start of the war.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days. 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.
Around the Strait of Hormuz, “shippers will hold off on attempting passage due to the potent risk of Iranian attack,” analysts at Eurasia Group wrote in a note. They expected shipping volumes to remain low, at up to 30 percent of normal at the high end.
Reopening the waterway would require a breakthrough in peace talks between the United States and Iran. “While the U.S. is projecting confidence that a deal can be reached, signals from the Iranian side are more pessimistic,” the analysts wrote. “Both sides are attempting to maximize leverage ahead of further rounds of negotiations,” they added.
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.
The Iran War Sent Shock Waves Through Asia That Are Likely to Spread
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/20/2026, 11:09:43 AM
When the war in Iran started on Feb. 28, Asia expected to see serious, gradual impacts from losing access to a huge portion of the world’s oil and gas. But the conflict’s economic and social impacts have hit the region harder and faster than officials and experts expected.
Many countries across the Asia-Pacific are experiencing sudden jolts of disruption that they are struggling to manage, with some comparing the crisis’s breakdowns and scope to the Covid pandemic.
Even if there is a peace deal soon, the future of this industrious region that has driven global economic growth for decades will likely include months of canceled flights, surging food prices, factory pauses, delayed shipments and empty shelves for products long considered quick and easy to buy worldwide: plastic bags, instant noodles, vaccines, syringes, lipstick, microchips and sportswear.
Collectively, according to many officials and experts, if the war’s strangling of commercial traffic through the Middle East lasts for even a few more weeks, and uncertainty lingers, shortages could push several countries into convulsions of unrest, followed by recession.
Countless businesses are verging on insolvency. Governments are taking on enormous debt to slow inflation. By year’s end, in the most dire projections by the United Nations and others, millions across Asia could be pushed into poverty.
“The impacts are so rapid and deep,” said Phillip Cornell, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center who is based in Sri Lanka. “Just from a magnitude perspective, this is really very, very, very large.”
Resource scarcity tends to unleash dark forces in human psychology and capitalism. As the International Monetary Fund has noted, the world economy is slowing nearly everywhere because roughly a fifth of the world’s fossil fuels have been held back from the global market since the war started. Even if the Strait of Hormuz stabilizes tomorrow, it could take years for oil and gas output and shipping to reach fat prewar levels.
The Asia-Pacific has been the war’s first and worst zone of impact outside the Middle East because:
1) the Asia-Pacific relies more heavily on Middle Eastern energy imports than almost anywhere else in the world;
2) the massive regional economy is deeply integrated, with supply chains crisscrossing borders in ways that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels;
3) even before the war started in February, Asia’s energy capacity was falling short of demand. The backlog for energy generation turbines now affecting global data-center growth started with surging power demands from Southeast Asia’s industrial hubs.
Wealthier countries, including China, face less immediate risk, with bigger fuel reserves and budgets. But comfort is neither permanent nor widespread. The rest of Asia, excluding China, is responsible for as much of the global economy as the United States or Europe. And many countries in that group have been struggling more than is publicly known.
In interviews, farmers in Vietnam, laborers in India, innkeepers in Sri Lanka, drivers in the Philippines, and executives in Hong Kong and Singapore all sounded more worried than many of the region’s politicians, who are seeking to project a stoic calm that often understates the scramble occurring offscreen.
Transportation, manufacturing and upward mobility — three pillars of stability in Asia — are all confronting powerful shock waves.
The United States and Israel started the war in Iran on Feb. 28. Within hours, trucks, ships and planes stopped operating in Asia, a region defined by near-constant motion across land, sky and sea.
Air travel, the strongest example of Asia’s transportation reversal, veered toward chaos.
In March, there were more than 92,000 flights canceled worldwide, doubling the prewar rate of cancellation, with the largest spike in eliminated flights linked to the Asia-Pacific.
Carriers flying through the Middle East, where 24 million migrant workers from South and Southeast Asia are employed, suspended trips to Dubai and other Gulf hubs right away. With jet fuel nearly doubling in price and with its availability threatened, airlines are slashing many more routes indefinitely.
Qantas, Air New Zealand, Lion Air of Indonesia, VietJet, AirAsia, Air India and Cathay Pacific are just a few of the companies cutting service. Batik Air of Malaysia has gone further than most, cutting flights by 35 percent this month to avoid insolvency.
Shukor Yusof from Endau Analytics, an airline advisory firm in Singapore, estimates that air traffic for Asia and the Pacific has already dropped by a third. Smaller airlines are losing millions of dollars weekly. Larger, better capitalized airlines in the region may survive, but discount players that buy more fuel on spot markets will likely shrivel, merge or die.
“Even if the cease-fire holds, because of the chokehold that’s been triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the flow of fuel is going to just be a trickle,” Mr. Yusof said.
“It’s massive in the scale of things, unprecedented in the industry,” he added. “Even with Covid, we weren’t gripped to our seats like we are now.”
Airports and airlines are not the only victims. Remote areas, from outback towns in Australia to the craggy foothills of the Himalayas, are slipping further into isolation. Travel agencies, hotels and restaurants are also grappling with a sudden collapse in business.
“Airline prices have tripled,” said Samath Gammampila, 39, director of Unu Boutique Hotel in Sri Lanka’s southern beach town of Ahangama. “We’re seeing about an 80 to 90 percent drop in occupancy.”
Interviews and official forecasts suggest the rest of the year could be as bad or worse in many countries.
Many of Asia’s most successful export industries require enormous amounts of energy and other ingredients from the Middle East. Seven weeks in, stockpiles are running out.
Cutbacks in manufacturing are now multiplying, revealing vulnerabilities rarely considered.
Copper and nickel production, for example, rely on high heat from natural gas and also sulfur, a fossil fuel byproduct. Both are in short supply, forcing several Indonesian nickel processors to reduce output by at least 10 percent.
Polyester and nylon are also derived from petroleum. In the sewing hubs of Bangladesh, Gazipur and Ashulia, where clothes are made for Wal-Mart, Zara and Uniqlo, severe disruptions to production and shipment schedules are common and on track to worsen.
“The strain we are under now — managing it will become very tough if there is no continuity in gas or fuel supply,” said Abdullah Hil Nakib, deputy managing director of TEAM, a Bangladeshi garment factory group. “We are seeing that the prices of our raw materials are also rising. Today the price of thread has almost doubled.”
Move on to higher-end manufacturing, and to helium, a gas byproduct used for semiconductors, and stress levels increase. Qatar, which normally produces nearly one third of the world’s supply, had to halt production on March 2 after an attack on its gas plants by Iran.
Prices have soared, and some Asian chipmakers are slowing production and reconsidering sources of supply.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest producer of high-end chips, had previously accepted helium from Qatar and the United States. On Thursday, the company said on an earnings call that it had enough on hand to avoid a near-term impact.
But a prolonged shortage could force the company and other chip makers to accept supply from other locations, like Russia, the world’s third-largest producer of helium. Or it could force production cuts that would roll through everything from electronics to cars.
One bottleneck begets another; that’s the pattern. Without enough petrochemicals to make plastic packaging, fewer Korean beauty products are heading to stores. A lack of fertilizer is threatening rice crops in Vietnam. Cattle farmers in steak-crazy Australia are even warning of a red meat shortage because of idled slaughterhouses and truckers.
Before the war, the United Nations projected that most of the next decade’s growth in middle-class consumers would be found in Asia.
Last week, a new U.N. report estimated that 8.8 million people in Asia and the Pacific are at risk of falling into poverty because of the war, depending on how long hostilities last. Most of those, about five million, would be in Iran. But in a region where most employment is informal, without a robust safety net, the conflict’s effects are starting to compound.
In an interview, Kanni Wignaraja, a U.N. assistant secretary‑general and U.N.D.P. regional director for Asia and the Pacific, said “the scale and the speed of transmission to Asia and the Pacific has been much bigger than initially anticipated.”
Poverty’s spread, she noted, threatens to be fused with other problems: vital medicines and vaccines failing to reach vulnerable populations; schools and universities unable to gather students; and increased pollution from the return to coal burning for electricity.
In India, where entire industrial clusters have been shut down for weeks by fuel shortages, workers are reversing urbanization, melting back to rural villages to thresh wheat. The cost of acetaminophen and some antibiotics in India has already gone up.
In Manila, Wednesday is considered a special day of Catholic devotion that usually attracts a throng of devotees and shoppers in the Philippine capital’s Baclaran district. After attending church, many scout for bargains at the nearby flea market.
But the district, far quieter since the war started, seemed closer to paralysis this week. Jeepney or minibus drivers gathered in groups, away from the wheel, for a three-day work strike to protest runaway gas and diesel prices.
Yunos Lilingco, 42, a widow and mother of three, said she initially believed the U.S.-Iran war wouldn’t affect her. She sells clothes she gets from a factory. The war seemed a world away.
But when gas prices went up, her costs rose, too. Her customer base has nearly disappeared. She used to make nearly $40 a day, now she makes less than $10.
“People don’t move around too much nowadays, because of high gas prices,” she said. “So there are fewer people to sell my clothes to.”
The U.N.’s report predicted that the war would cost Asia and the Pacific between $97 billion and $299 billion, equivalent to between 0.3 and 0.8 percent of regional gross domestic product.
At street level, suffering often starts with higher food prices and reduced employment.
“You’re losing income, and at the same time you’re paying more,” said Ms. Wignaraja, the U.N. official.
In the northern region of the Philippines, which supplies most of the country’s highland vegetables, like cabbage and broccoli, scarcity is killing abundance. Crops ready to be harvested last week are rotting in fertile fields, with farmers unable to afford the costs of transporting them to market.
The war’s damage, so quick and deep across the Asia-Pacific, will not be easy to contain. Even if the United States and Iran reach a lasting peace, the forces of scarcity and inflation have gained momentum and are on the move.
“You’ve seen tsunamis — they go across the ocean very, very fast,” said Mr. Cornell from the Atlantic Council. “I find it breathtaking to see the degree to which American policymakers think that they are insulated.”
Reporting was contributed by Jason Gutierrez from Manila; Hari Kumar, Pragati K.B. and Alex Travelli from New Delhi; Saif Hasnat from Dhaka, Bangladesh; Pamodi Waravita from Ahangama, Sri Lanka; Meaghan Tobin from Taipei, Taiwan; and River Akira Davis from Tokyo.
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.
Read the full story at nyt News.
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