live Iran's New Security Chief Demands US End War To Reopen Hormuz Strait

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US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said that oil shipments from the Persian Gulf region had climbed to around 15 million barrels per day.

In a post on X on August 11, Wright said the seven-day average through the Strait of Hormuz had reached almost 9 million barrels per day, with another 5 million to 7 million barrels moving through pipelines and other export facilities.

Wright said that more than 20 million barrels left the wider Gulf region on August 9 alone.

Before the war, around 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products passed through the Strait of Hormuz each day.

Despite the recent increase cited by Wright, tanker traffic through the strait remains well below prewar levels, according to ship-tracking data cited by Reuters.

US President Donald Trump has said his options in the war with Iran include allowing Tehran to continue deteriorating economically or hitting it "really, really hard," even as diplomatic efforts toward a possible deal continue.

In a phone interview with Real America's Voice News late on August 10, Trump accused Iran of being "very devious negotiators" and said he was still negotiating with the Islamic republic.

His comments came as Pakistan, which has played a mediating role between Washington and Tehran during the conflict, said the two sides were close to "some sort" of agreement, while Qatar said talks over managing the Strait of Hormuz were at an advanced stage.

Trump also dismissed concerns over depleted US munitions, saying they were being produced "like crazy."

Reuters reported last week that the US Army had used much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during the conflict.

With reporting by Reuters

In his first public remarks since being appointed as the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, has said that the United States must end the war with his country and release frozen Iranian funds for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen.

According to Iranian media, Rezaei said during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Tehran that Tehran would not move to reopen the crucial waterway, which usually accounts for around one fifth of global oil and gas supplies, until the United States “changes its behavior and accepts Iran's conditions.”

He cited ending the war and releasing the frozen funds as two of the conditions.

Rezaei's remarks on August 11 came a day after US President Donald Trump told reporters that the United States had "mineswept" the entire Strait of Hormuz and had effectively taken control of it.

Rezaei's predecessor, Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr, had set out similar conditions last week.

Rezaei also commented on talks between the Islamic republic and Oman over passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which have been under way in recent weeks.

He said that if the two countries reach an agreement on the issue, “this agreement will be a matter separate from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran has severely restricted shipping through the strait since the conflict began, with daily traffic now a fraction of prewar levels.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei's decision to formalize six senior military and security postings within 48 hours is less a personnel story than the closing chapter of a five-month improvisation.

Read together, the appointments announced on August 10 show a new supreme leader moving to convert an emergency wartime chain of command, cobbled together after Israeli and US strikes killed much of Iran's senior military leadership, into a permanent structure built around his own circle of trust.

Read more here

At least six people were killed in strikes that Yemen's internationally recognized government blamed on Iran-backed Houthi rebels targeting an Egyptian-owned cargo ship near the Bab el-Mandeb strait on August 11, according to the country's coastguard.

Four sailors aboard the Tihamah -- three Pakistanis and one Indonesian -- were killed in an initial strike that caused a fire and extensive damage to the vessel, the coastguard said. A second strike hit as rescue workers were evacuating the ship, killing two members of the responding forces.

The coastguard said 10 people were injured in the strikes.

A Houthi media outlet later reported that the group's armed forces had targeted a ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait that it said was carrying Saudi military equipment. The report did not identify the vessel as the Tihamah, and there has been no official Houthi statement claiming responsibility for the attack.

Yemen's Transport Ministry earlier blamed the Houthis for multiple strikes on the Tihamah but put the death toll at four.

The attacks would mark the first reported fatalities from a Houthi strike on shipping since the Iran war began in February. The Houthis declared that they were imposing a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia in July as fighting in Yemen resumed following the collapse of a years-long truce.

Saudi Arabia has backed Yemen's government against the Houthis since leading a military intervention in 2015, although cross-border hostilities had largely subsided in recent years.

Separately, the US military said it fired on a Panama-flagged container ship that was trying to evade the US blockade of Iranian ports. In a post on X, US Central Command said its forces "disabled the steering gear" of the M/V Vela Nova as it "attempted to transit the Gulf of Oman" and sail toward an Iranian port.

"A U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two hellfire missiles into the Vela Nova’s engine room after the ship’s civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces," it said. "The ship is no longer transiting to Iran in violation of the U.S. blockade, which remains in full effect."

The incident was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Shipping traffic through key regional waterways has fallen sharply amid the conflict, with Bab el-Mandeb transits averaging 32 ships daily last week, while traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains far below prewar levels.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP. This blog entry has been updated.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has reportedly arrived in Tehran on August 11 for talks with Iranian officials that are expected to focus on the indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz for international shipping.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA, quoting diplomatic sources, reported that the Pakistani minister will discuss matters of mutual interest with Iranian officials. There has been no official confirmation of the visit from Islamabad.

The report of Naqvi's visit, which, if confirmed, would be his first to Tehran since the signing of the Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, came as Bloomberg News quoted Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif as saying the United ⁠States ⁠and ‌Iran are close to "some ⁠sort of an arrangement."

The joint defense agreement has been viewed by some analysts as the potential emergence of a Sunni Muslim front against Shiite Muslim Iran.

Naqvi, who is seen as a front man for Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir, has been spearheading Islamabad’s mediation role in helping move toward a peace settlement between Tehran and Washington.

The ⁠United ⁠Kingdom ‌Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) says it has received a report of an "incident" involving a container ship and military forces in the Gulf of Oman.

"Vessels are advised to consider the latest maritime security information and maintain awareness of the evolving operational environment," UKMTO said in a statement on the report on August 11.

It gave no details of the incident.

Reuters, quoting maritime security forces, said the vessel -- believed to be the Panama-flagged Vela Nova container ship -- was hit by a missile off the coast of Pakistan.

Ongoing disputes between the United States and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway that connects the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, have crippled maritime transit in the region.

Iran has shut down the critical waterway, crimping a major source of oil tanker traffic for global markets. Tehran has used the shutdown as an essential card in its negotiations with Washington. The US, in turn, has blockaded all vessels from heading to Iranian ports in and around the strait.

Although Trump initially said the elimination of Tehran's nuclear threat was the major aim of the US-Israeli war with Iran, which began on February 28, in recent weeks he has focused on the free flow of traffic through the important Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world's oil and natural gas supplies transited prewar.

US President Donald Trump says Washington has effectively taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, claiming the strategic waterway has been cleared of mines and that a US blockade of Iranian ports is holding firm.

“We have a blockade that has been infallible; it’s a steel wall,” Trump told reporters at the White House on August 10. He said the strait was “actually open now” because the United States was allowing selected vessels to pass, while preventing ships from entering Iran.

Trump also claimed that the United States had “mineswept” the entire waterway, a key shipping route through which a large share of global oil supplies normally passes. Iran has continued to assert control over traffic in the strait and has said its reopening depends on conditions including an end to US sanctions and compensation for wartime damage.

Trump rejected Tehran’s demand for compensation, saying Washington would instead seek payments from Iran for Americans killed or wounded in conflicts over decades. He cited the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and alleged Iranian responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including protesters killed in recent unrest. Trump also said Iran had killed 52,000 protesters over the past four months, referring to a figure he said was an estimate from about a month and a half ago.

Asked whether Washington was still considering a major military escalation against Iran, Trump said the United States “certainly” had the ability to do so. “You’ll find out,” he said when asked what would happen next.

Maritime-security expert Ian Ralby, head of Auxilium Worldwide, told RFE/RL that shipping companies’ ability to use the strait safely remains dependent on the security situation and Iranian permission.

“The reality for the shipping lines on the water is that if they try to go through the US-protected corridor without Iranian permission, they have a very strong likelihood ... of getting attacked,” Ralby said, citing recent drone and missile attacks.

He said insurers and shipping companies would need to see a sustained period of safe navigation before insurance premiums begin to fall. “It is important for the US to show more than tell at this point,” Ralby said.

President Donald Trump declared that the United States would demand compensation from Iran for all killed American soldiers and Iranian protesters over the "past 50 years," and said this issue will be raised in future negotiations with Tehran.

"I see that Representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran are asking for compensation for the damage done to them during the last five month Military Conflict,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on August 10.

He said that the issue of compensation has not been raised in any of the negotiations or meetings since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, but that "it is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts.”

“Additionally, compensation should be paid to the families of the hundreds of thousands of innocent protestors that Iran has killed over the last 50 years," including what he said were “the 52,000 that have been killed in the last five months.”

There has been a surge of executions in recent weeks, and rights groups have documented more than 6,000 deaths during the crackdown that followed nationwide protests in January, but many say the real toll is much higher. Some estimates put the figure in the tens of thousands.

In a separate post that followed an hour later, Trump added that "Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza!"

Trump said he had instructed his representatives to put the issue of compensations “firmly into any, and all, future negotiations..”