Hi, I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.
And joining me once again is Foreign Affairs Correspondent Vaughn Cockayne.
[GERBO] The war in Iran continues now, nearing the two-month mark as the United States and Iran jockey for economic supremacy in the Middle East, as mediators in Pakistan are trying to find ways to bring this conflict to an end. The U.S. has extended what was a two-week ceasefire, now indefinitely. President Trump saying he’ll postpone attacks on Iran, calling Iran’s leadership fractured as they try to come together and find a peace proposal. Pakistan, which has been mediating the conflict, had requested this ceasefire to allow more time for an agreement, even though we’ve seen these little back-and-forth, tit for tat — not necessarily terribly violent, but still sometimes these attacks back and forth between Iran and the United States on proxies and ships, which we’ll get into here in a few moments.
But Vaughn, at least so far, this conflict — which the president has said over and over again was going to be quick, it was not going to be prolonged or lengthy — we’re now nearing two months here, and there still doesn’t seem to be an immediate way that this war is going to end.
[COCKAYNE] Yeah, that’s right. There really is no end in sight. As far as we’re aware, there aren’t going to be any further talks — at least there’s no talks planned. At least from the Iranian side, there’s no indication that there’s any appetite for further talks. The president has also said that they’re exceptionally divided, as he said, and have been unable to provide an adequate or consistent peace proposal or response through Pakistani mediators.
And complicating things, as you said, are these tit-for-tat interdictions in the Strait of Hormuz and beyond. The United States intercepted another Iranian-flag tanker in the Indo-Pac region, that could be really anywhere outside the Strait of Hormuz, almost to the western United States. And, Iran fired on at least three different commercial tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz for — at least according to them — attempting to traverse the strait without the proper documentation. And these sort of interdictions and assaults have really fractured the already fragile ceasefire.
And the president even said that, you know, they’re going to shoot and eliminate anybody on these small boats that are placing mines in the Strait of Hormuz. If you want any indication that the ceasefire is really in name only, it’s the president’s statement that they would shoot at boats, which would — really by the definition of shooting and firing — sort of eliminate the idea that there is any kind of real ceasefire here.
[GERBO] To stay on that point, Vaughn, you mentioned the U.S. boarding that ship in the Indo-Pacific; Iran seizing ships belonging to international shipping company MSC container ships, saying that those vessels didn’t have the necessary permits to transit the strait. Maritime control access can get murky — pardon the water-related pun there — with where these ships are flagged, that is their country of origin that they originate from. And then also if they’re. required to pay to transit a place, not required, what they’re carrying. We’ve seen vessels that have tried to pretend — carry themselves as Iranian vessels just to get through the strait. It’s making things even more complicated in a region that not just now during this war, which brought it into focus, but this strait has been a focal point for global maritime transit for a long time.
[COCKAYNE] Yeah, that’s right. As a lot of people have reported, at least 20% — or about a fifth — of the world’s oil exports go through the strait each year. And its closure has really strangled and throttled global energy markets and markets in general.
Iran has sort of made it pretty clear that they’re planning on maintaining control of the strait after the war ends, even if the United States says that they don’t. And they probably had the most explicit declaration of that by saying that they have begun officially to collect tolls for ships traveling through the strait. And as Iran has said, only ships that are not linked to the United States or Israel are allowed to travel through the strait — are going to have to pay a fee. Several lawmakers said that they’ve already collected fees and that those fees have been deposited into central bank accounts.
It’s unclear exactly how much each ship is going to pay. Iranian lawmakers are saying that it’ll depend on the size of the ship, how much the ship is carrying. But what’s clear is that Iran wants to move the general pathway that ships have to travel through through the strait up north towards clear Iranian waters, so that they will have to go through these loopholes and checkpoints through the IRGC to make it through there safely. And then, yes, pay that fee.
Several reports say that other ships flagged through Pakistan or China or India have been paying Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency to make it through safely, though Iran said that the payments that have been placed into the coffers in the central bank in Tehran have been cash and not cryptocurrency — and that’s at odds with a lot of different reporting.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
Read more:
- Kushner, Witkoff to travel to Pakistan for renewed talks with Iran
- Trump rules out using nuclear weapons against Iran
- Iran says it is collecting transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz
- ‘No hesitation’: Trump orders Navy to shoot mine-laying boats in Strait of Hormuz
- Iranian official claims ‘iron unity’ within country, pushing back on White House talk of factions
- Trump defends length of military operation in Iran: ‘Don’t rush me’
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