A Red Sea blockade threatens a new front in US.-Iran war

Tehran and Washington are doubling down on their standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, as a Red Sea blockade risks shutting another key shipping route amid an expanding war.

Days of U.S. strikes have not loosened Tehran’s chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for the world’s oil supply, while tit-for-tat strikes replace a collapsed ceasefire.

A tanker came under attack in the strait early Tuesday, near Oman, forcing the crew to abandon the ship on a lifeboat, the British navy’s maritime trade operations center said. Iran said fires broke out on two tankers that passed through an unauthorized route.

“As long as American hostilities in the region continue, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tuesday in remarks carried by the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency.

Threatening to widen the conflict roiling the Middle East, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen announced Monday a blockade on Saudi Arabia’s shipments through the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

If successful, the move could choke off one of the Gulf’s few viable alternatives for oil exports and reduce global supply by an estimated 7 percent. Already, 10 percent of global oil shipments are halted by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely shut by Iranian threats and mines since the U.S. and Israel launched the war five months ago.

The U.S.-Iran ceasefire announced in June, which included a 60-day negotiation period, had raised hopes that traffic could flow again.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, rose Tuesday to around $90 a barrel as investors weighed hopes of a resolution with renewed fighting. The benchmark oil price has risen sharply since the $70 seen in early July as some shipments began to resume transiting the Strait of Hormuz. In the United States, the national average gas price rose above $4 per gallon this week, following an average of $3.85 one week ago.

Renewed hostility around Hormuz is stoking concern about oil supply, but the markets “continue to benefit from several cushioning factors,” Fatih Birol, the head of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said Tuesday.

The market response to the latest bout of fighting is so far short of the reaction some analysts feared, as traders bank on stockpiles and alternative routes to offset the impact, said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London think tank.

But a new disruption at Bab al-Mandeb, with shipping companies already under pressure over Hormuz, would likely trigger a “a much higher geopolitical risk premium,” he said.

With its military and economy under strain, “Tehran increasingly views its influence over the Strait of Hormuz as an existential asset,” Quilliam said. “If Iranian leaders conclude that the survival of the regime is at stake, they are likely to use every tool available to defend that position.”

Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition against Yemen’s Houthis, had sought to circumvent the deadlock in the Persian Gulf by routing oil to its Red Sea ports. Those tankers then mostly sail through Bab al-Mandeb.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine are set to appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday to defend the administration’s request for additional military funding to pay for the Iran war. They are expected to face sharp questions from lawmakers of both parties about the state of the conflict and the administration’s plan for the Strait of Hormuz.

On Tuesday, Tehran claimed fresh attacks on U.S. military assets in Jordan and Bahrain, after a 10th consecutive night of U.S. bombardment in Iran. U.S. Central Command said overnight that its strikes hit Iranian command centers, missile and drone launch sites and air defense systems.

The U.S. strikes followed a pledge from President Donald Trump to make Iran pay “many times over” for the killing of U.S. forces in the region in recent days.

Iran’s forces also launched attack drones at U.S. military hubs and installations in Kuwait. Iranian media said Tuesday that the drones targeted Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, along with a helicopter parking station at Camp Udairi and U.S. military housing at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base.

The reimposition of a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports appears to have failed to disrupt Tehran’s oil revenues in the way Washington might have hoped, some analysts said.

Quilliam said that while Iran’s assets are degraded, it still retains “substantial missile, drone, naval and proxy capabilities and has demonstrated a willingness to use them” to raise the stakes.

The Pentagon has disclosed that nearly 100 U.S. troops have been injured in the U.S. war with Iran over the last two weeks, underscoring the extent of Tehran’s retaliation against U.S. military sites in the region as negotiations faltered.

The Pentagon on Tuesday identified a soldier killed in Northern Iraq over the weekend. Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was killed during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian one-way attack drone on Sunday at Erbil Air Base, Iraq. Swinton was one of three soldiers reported killed over the past few days as the U.S. resumed strikes against Iran.

The Pentagon is still awaiting identification of remains it has found of a potential fourth service member still listed as missing after an Iranian missile attack in Jordan last week.

Even as the U.S. and Iran appear to dig in, Iran’s Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni traveled Monday to neighboring Pakistan, which helped mediate the ceasefire.

A separate track of talks between Lebanon and Israel has continued under U.S. auspices, despite ongoing fighting between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah on another front of the regional conflict. As the two governments hold negotiations, Hezbollah has opposed the talks and Israeli air strikes have still pounded Lebanon’s battered south.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun is in Washington for the first visit to the White House by a Lebanese president since Barack Obama was in office. He meets with Trump on Tuesday as Lebanese leaders appeal to the administration to help end Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon and mobilize aid for the Lebanese military to disarm Hezbollah.

Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.