Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Apr 13, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Deadline Passes for U.S. Blockade in Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. military said it would block ships entering or leaving Iranian ports or coastal areas, in an effort to cut off Iran’s oil income. There was no immediate confirmation that the blockade had begun at 10 a.m. Eastern, as scheduled.
Updated
April 13, 2026, 11:52 a.m. ET4 minutes ago
Aaron BoxermanIsabel KershnerJenny Gross and Eric Schmitt
Here’s the latest
A U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz began Monday as an effort to raise pressure on Tehran, threatening to threatened a fragile cease-fire between Iran and the United States as European countries rejected involvement in the move.
A U.S. military official confirmed the blockade was in effect without providing additional details, and there was no indication of any incident in the blockade’s first 90 minutes. President Trump said on social media shortly after it started that any Iranian ships that approached the blockade would be “immediately ELIMINATED.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement of the blockade on Sunday came after high-level talks over the weekend between American and Iranian negotiators ended without a breakthrough.
Now Mr. Trump wants to prevent Iran from profiting from oil exports and force its leaders to accept American conditions for ending more than a month of war. Iranian forces have largely barred Western tankers and ships from transiting the strait, a Persian Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes. The price of oil has soared by more than 50 percent at times since the war began in late February.
The U.S. military said that it would block ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas” while allowing other vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz on their way to or from non-Iranian ports.
Mr. Trump had conditioned the two-week cease-fire with Iran, which went into effect last Wednesday, on Iran reopening the strait. But in practice, only a handful of tankers have passed through the waterway, with most others avoiding it for fear of Iranian mines or other interference. Two tankers linked to Iran — one carrying naphtha, a petroleum product, and the other carrying gas oil — slipped through the strait hours before the blockade deadline.
Iran warned of repercussions. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, said Monday that if Iranian ports were threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will be safe.” The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose about 7 percent on Monday, to $102 a barrel. U.S. markets opened slightly lower after stocks fell in Asia and Europe.
Experts on Iran questioned whether a U.S. blockade would force Iran’s leadership to accept terms that five weeks of war and the killing of many Iranian leaders had not. The Trump administration has been insisting on stopping Iranian nuclear enrichment, as well as confiscating stockpiles of enriched uranium it says could form the basis for a bomb.
European leaders, already frustrated by Mr. Trump’s military campaign in Iran, quickly distanced themselves from the blockade, despite his promise “that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a radio interview that the United Kingdom would not participate, while Spain’s defense minister said the maneuver “makes no sense.”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Israel: The 40-day war with Iran and the continued war with Hezbollah have left many Israelis despairing over how little they believe the fighting accomplished, particularly compared with what they had been promised, according to two new polls. Read more ›
Lebanon: The Israeli military said that its forces had encircled and raided the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, one of the largest communities near the border between the two countries. Israel’s attacks there have become a sticking point in the cease-fire negotiations, as Iran has demanded the truce extend to Lebanon. According to the Lebanese government, more than 2,000 people have been killed in the country since Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, fired on northern Israel in early March, prompting a widening Israeli ground invasion. The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States are expected to meet in Washington this week for rare direct talks.
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,701 civilians, including 254 children, had been killed in Iran as of Wednesday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Saturday said that 2,020 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, including 357 in a wave of Israeli strikes last Wednesday. In attacks attributed to Iran, at least 32 people have been killed in Gulf nations. At least 22 people had been killed in Israel as of Sunday, as well as 12 Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon. The American death toll stands at 13 service members.
April 13, 2026, 11:32 a.m. ET26 minutes ago
Reporting from Washington
Trump Administration’s Temporary Reprieve on Russian Oil Expires
The United States did not extend a sanctions exemption that had allowed the sale of some Russian oil, stepping back from a contentious plan to try and contain global crude prices that was also providing an economic windfall to Moscow.
The White House has been working to bring more oil to world markets since the start of the war in the Middle East, which caused crude prices to surge above $100 a barrel. President Trump over the weekend threatened to prevent Iran from profiting from oil exports by restricting oil tankers from traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. The price of oil has soared by more than 50 percent since the war began in late February.
The Treasury Department last month gave both Russia and Iran one-month reprieves on sanctions that had restricted their oil sales, allowing buyers around the world to legally purchase oil that the United States had blacklisted. The sanctions waiver on Russia expired on Saturday morning, and the temporary license allowing Iran to sell oil expires on April 19.
Oil prices rose again on Monday after Mr. Trump’s vow to impose the blockade to prevent Iran from dictating who can purchase crude.
It remains to be seen whether the administration will allow more Russian and Iranian oil to flow given the pain that higher oil prices are causing American consumers.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump also downplayed the economic effects of the war, which have been a political liability for him. Asked if oil and gas prices could fall by the midterm elections in November, he said they “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher” — an indication that the economic turmoil of the war could linger for months, even if a lasting peace is reached.
The sanctions relief for Russia has been controversial, pausing years of economic pressure that the United States was deploying in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has been sharing military intelligence with Iran as it tries to fend off America and has been benefiting from higher oil prices.
Energy analysts have estimated that Russia has been earning more than $100 million per day in additional oil revenue because of the exemption and that Moscow has taken in at least $12.8 billion in oil taxes so far in April — double the revenue in March.
At the same time, the relief did little to ease oil prices. Much of Russia’s oil is transported on its “shadow fleet” of unmarked tankers and evades international sanctions.
The cease-fire with Iran sent oil prices plunging in the hours after Mr. Trump announced the deal, but very little has changed on the ground. Shipping companies remain wary of sending vessels through the strait, and a substantial portion of the world’s oil is still trapped in the Persian Gulf. Crude prices did fall below $100 per barrel on Friday ahead of talks between the United States and Iran.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week called for the sanctions to be reimposed, warning that “oil fuels Russia’s war and emboldens it.” Ukraine has also been ramping up its attacks on Russian oil tankers as it looks to limit the windfall from the sanctions waiver and higher oil prices.
In the United States, a group of top Democratic lawmakers urged the Trump administration not to let up on Russia.
“Instead of aiming to limit that Russian windfall, Treasury helped the Kremlin and its evasion network increase their profits,” the senators said in a joint statement on Friday, adding, “It remains far from clear that the extraordinary step of providing sanctions relief to Russia provided any relief for U.S. consumers or eased the global energy crisis.”
Show less
April 13, 2026, 10:50 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan
President Trump re-upped his threat to attack any Iranian ships that try to cross the Strait of Hormuz, though it’s unclear if the blockade he announced Sunday has officially begun.
“Warning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” he wrote on Truth Social.
April 13, 2026, 10:39 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Johnatan Reiss and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
It is past 6 p.m. in Tehran, a half-hour after the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian parts of the Strait of Hormuz was set to begin. U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, a British maritime monitoring group, alerted mariners that it had been informed that maritime access restrictions would be enforced on vessels of any flag engaging with Iranian ports, oil terminals, or coastal facilities along the entirety of Iran’s coastline.
Neutral vessels in Iranian ports would be granted a “limited grace period to depart,” it said, advising any vessels in the region to “maintain heightened situational awareness.”
April 13, 2026, 10:29 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Tel Aviv
Intensive fire exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, continued on Monday, as Israeli and Lebanese officials are set to meet in Washington on Tuesday to discuss a potential end to the conflict.
The Israeli military said it had intercepted more than 10 drones launched by the group toward Israel since Monday morning. A residential house in Nahariya, a city in northern Israel, was struck by a rocket, injuring one woman, according to authorities. In Lebanon, the Israeli military said commando forces had raided sites in the country’s south on Sunday. Troops had also encircled and raided Bint Jbeil, a large town in southern Lebanon, the military said. The conflict in Lebanon has killed more than 2,000 people there since it began in early March, according to government figures.
April 13, 2026, 9:46 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reham Mourshed
Reporting from Damascus, Syria
Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, held a call today with Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, according to statements from both officials. In its statement, Qatar’s foreign ministry said the two sides discussed “ongoing mediation efforts.”
Referring to the Strait of Hormuz, Al Thani also stressed “the necessity of opening maritime passages, ensuring freedom of navigation, and not using them as a bargaining chip or leverage,” according to the statement, “emphasizing in this context the negative repercussions of that on the region’s countries, global energy and food supplies, and their implications for international security and peace.”
April 13, 2026, 9:35 a.m. ET2 hours ago
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents and written extensively over the past 20 years about efforts to compel Iran to surrender its nuclear program, by diplomacy, sabotage and force.
Trump’s blockade sets up a test of which side can endure more pain
President Trump’s decision to blockade all Iranian shipments out of or into the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning sets up the next great test in the Iran war: Which side can endure more economic pain, Tehran’s new leadership or Mr. Trump himself?
Almost everything about how this new turn in the war plays out is likely to look very different than what has unfolded so far.
Instead of directing missiles and bombs at military sites, missile emplacements and Iran’s defense industry, Mr. Trump will try to choke off the country’s lifeblood, the oil that accounts for more than 50 percent of its exports and just about all of the government’s revenue.
The president’s first hope, administration officials said on Sunday, is to force the government to surrender to the terms that Vice President JD Vance laid out in peace talks in Islamabad, Pakistan — and that Iran rejected, just as it did in negotiations in Geneva before the war began on Feb. 28. The list of terms starts with Iran’s agreement to turn over every ounce of its uranium stockpile, permanently dismantle its huge infrastructure for producing nuclear fuel and give up its claims to regulate traffic in the strait.
Failing an Iranian capitulation, Mr. Trump appears to still harbor the hope he expressed the first evening of the war: that a restive Iranian populace will rise up and overthrow the military-clerical regime that has guided the country since the revolution in 1979. But engineering that outcome is no easier than it was a month and a half ago.
For its part, Iran’s strategy appears to be one of waging the conflict in the global markets, where Tehran has discovered new powers. Acutely aware that they lost the military contest in the first five weeks, but performed above expectations in the information arena and in terrorizing their neighbors with well-aimed missile and drone strikes, the Iranians are betting that Mr. Trump’s tolerance for political pain is limited.
If no Iranian oil gets through the strait, prices could keep rising over time — some companies say they are planning for $175 a barrel. The Iranians understand the potential political effects of continued inflation in the United States less than seven months before midterm elections.
“Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4 to $5 gas,” Iran’s top negotiator and the speaker of its Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned American consumers after the failure of the talks he led with Mr. Vance. As of Monday morning, with the naval blockade about to begin, the markets did not seem especially panicked: Brent crude oil prices rose about 6 percent, to just above $101 a barrel, but were still below where they were before the cease-fire was declared last week.
Mr. Trump, for his part, is dialing back his previous claim that as the shooting stops, gas prices will drop. He told Fox News on Sunday that prices “should be around the same” during the midterms and might be “a little bit higher.” That is the exact fear of many Republican candidates.
This is uncharted territory. Like President John F. Kennedy’s “quarantine” of Cuba in 1962, intended to keep the Soviets from bringing nuclear weapons onto Cuban soil, it is impossible to know beforehand how this will play out. Back then, Kennedy and his advisers watched anxiously to see if the Soviets would try to “run the line” and risk military confrontation with the U.S. Navy or whether they would retreat, negotiate and find a face-saving way out.
The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, chose to back off.
After the blockade on any ships leaving or destined for Iranian ports goes into effect, at 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday, it may become clear whether the new ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps make the same choice. But without a navy, Iran knows it has virtually no chance in a direct confrontation.
For Mr. Trump, this is yet another reversal of strategy. A few weeks ago, he decided to allow Iran to sell oil that was already at sea, in hopes of easing supply shortages. But the effects on prices were minimal. And Mr. Trump looked as though he were conducting a halfhearted war, bombing Iran while allowing it to profit. And the country's imposition of tolls on traffic going through the strait meant that a new revenue stream was opening up for Tehran at the moment it needed it most.
“The current situation, in which Iran gets to deny use of the strait to all except its friends or those who pay up, is untenable,” said Richard Haass, a former Republican senior national security official and the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was among the first to advocate a blockade strategy.
“It gets rich while others get poor,” he continued. “A blockade adds to the economic pressure on Iran that already existed before the war and was made worse by the war. If they want to sell their oil, they need to reopen the strait to all.”
The test of the strategy may well be how Iran’s biggest customers react. Mr. Haass argues for pairing the blockade with a diplomatic strategy to get China, India, Pakistan and Turkey — all major customers of Iran — to pressure the country to give in to U.S. demands and get oil flowing again. But it is unclear whether they will do so, especially if China sees an opportunity to profit in the long term from the confrontation.
Mr. Haass also said that “we should couple the threat or reality of a blockade with a proposal to establish new governance authority for the strait that would include Iran,” giving it a voice — but not control — over governance of the waterway.
It might work. But there is also the possibility that Iran’s reaction will be to resume attacks on energy facilities in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and perhaps even Saudi Arabia. In that scenario, Iran would essentially say that if it cannot ship oil, its Arab neighbors will not be able to, either.
As with so much in this war, there was confusion on Sunday about what, exactly, was subject to blockade. Mr. Trump’s social media post declared a “complete” blockade on all traffic in and out of the strait. But as described in a news release on Sunday from U.S. Central Command, the blockade applies only to ships going to or from Iranian ports. Cargo from other Gulf states will be allowed to pass, assuming they are willing to take the risk of hitting mines or being attacked by Iranian speedboats or drones. It was also unclear how the United States would determine which ships had paid a toll to the Iranians.
The strait has been shuttered before, of course, but history does not provide much guidance that fits the current situation.
As Mr. Haass, along with the historians Niall Ferguson and Philip Zelikow noted in The Free Press last week, the Portuguese first took control of the strait 519 years ago and charged a toll. They were ousted by Persian and British forces. Half a millennium later, the Portuguese and the British made clear that the attack on Iran, even in the name of preventing it from getting within reach of a nuclear weapon, was ill considered.
In the early 1950s, Britain blockaded the strait after Iran’s prime minister at the time, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized the country’s oil industry. He was overthrown in a coup that was partly supported by the C.I.A., a covert intervention that the Iranians resent to this day and that history has not treated kindly.
And there were episodic disruptions during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
But none of those experiences is a very close analog to the complex confrontation that is currently unfolding. If the blockade is short-lived and ends Iran’s ability to extort the global economy, Mr. Trump’s gamble may well look like a savvy turning of the tables. And if the Iranian leadership gives in to his demands, it may ratify Mr. Trump’s conclusion that the new leadership is more “reasonable” than the last.
If the blockade drags on, though, Mr. Trump runs the risk of looking once again as though he failed to see around corners, anticipating what could go wrong with an attack on what appeared to be a weakened Iran. The war that he thought might last only days is entering its seventh week. And for the global economy, the hard part is not close to over.
Show less
April 13, 2026, 9:18 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Reporting from Washington
The Trump administration has not yet extended a sanctions exemption allowing the sale of some Russian oil after it expired early Saturday morning. The one-month reprieve was issued to help lower oil prices, which are rising again amid continued tension in the Middle East.
April 13, 2026, 9:14 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Arsenio Dominguez, the head of the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for shipping safety and security, said that he did not expect the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to have a big effect, given the number of ships passing through the waterway was already extremely low. “For me, the greater the point that I’m trying to take across is that ships were not transiting anyway,” he said in a news conference in London. “An additional blockade just doesn’t really help anything in finding a solution to the conflict.”
April 13, 2026, 8:43 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Two tankers with links to Iran exited the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, according to Kpler. One of the ships, the tanker Auroura, a sanctioned ship, was believed to carrying a cargo of Iranian naphtha, a petroleum product.
The second tanker, the New Future, loaded gas oil at the United Arab Emirates’ Hamriyah port. The New Future’s previous three trades have been with Iran. They crossed before the U.S. carried out its blockade, set to go into effect later this morning, on ships entering or departing Iranian ports.
April 13, 2026, 8:17 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Ahead of the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, set to go into effect at 10 a.m. Eastern time, some vessels were still transiting, though volumes were very low compared to before the war, said Alexis Ellender, an analyst at the global trade analysis firm Kpler.
“There is still a trickle of trade making its way through,” he said. But the risk appetite for major shipping companies is “incredibly low.” Sending their vessels through the strait is “just not worth it for them,” he said.
April 13, 2026, 7:27 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Reporting from Rehovot, Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel supported President Trump’s proposed naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf. In a statement, Netanyahu said he had spoken with Vice President JD Vance following the negotiations between the United States and Iran in Pakistan.
Vance told him that the U.S. had stressed that Iran’s enriched uranium had to be removed and enrichment in Iran stopped for years under any deal, Netanyahu said. “Claims that there is any rift between us are completely false,” he added.
April 13, 2026, 6:44 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Brussels bureau chief
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, is speaking to reporters in Brussels after a meeting about the situation in the Middle East. “The ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz is greatly damaging, and the restoration of the freedom of navigation is of paramount importance for us,” she said.
She also called for and end to hostilities in Lebanon, saying that “security is indivisible. You cannot have stability in the Middle East or the Gulf while Lebanon is in flames.”
April 13, 2026, 7:11 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Brussels bureau chief
Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Comission leader, also discussed the impact of soaring energy costs in the European Union amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The European Union is working on measures to alleviate the impact on consumers, and those will be discussed at a meeting of E.U. leaders in Cyprus next week.
But von der Leyen and her colleagues are trying to leverage this crisis to speed up Europe’s shift to renewable energy, pushing for faster electrification and quicker efforts to pump up grid and battery investment. “We need to scale up the homegrown, affordable, reliable energy,” von der Leyen said. “They give us independence, predictability and energy security.”
April 13, 2026, 6:28 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Chief U.K. reporter
Britain will not join the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Starmer says
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain was blunt on Monday morning. His country is “not supporting” President Trump’s threatened military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran broke down over the weekend.
The prime minister told the BBC in a radio interview that he was focused on “bringing countries together to keep the straits open, not shut,” adding that “it is, in my view, vital that we get the strait open and fully open.”
But Mr. Starmer refused to blame Mr. Trump personally for rising energy costs in Britain, saying that it was Iran that had driven up the price of oil by making the strait too dangerous for cargo ships to travel through.
After the host of the radio show pointed out repeatedly that Iran’s actions were in response to Mr. Trump’s decision to launch the war in the first place, Mr. Starmer finally said, simply: “I mean, I’m not, look, I’m not going to get involved in that.”
The interview put on display the longstanding challenge for Mr. Starmer in dealing with Mr. Trump and his chaotic foreign policy.
On the one hand, Mr. Starmer’s refusal to join the American and Israeli-led war in Iran has triggered Mr. Trump’s ire. The prime minister has said he will not give in to “pressure” from the president to drag Britain into another conflict in the Middle East.
The decision to stand up to Mr. Trump appears to be popular in Britain, where Mr. Starmer’s low poll ratings have picked up slightly.
But Mr. Starmer, who is a careful lawyer by trade, remains wary of doing too much to anger Mr. Trump, given the many security, economic and cultural ties between the two countries. Mr. Starmer has said that he still believes there is a “special relationship” between the United States and Britain that is worth protecting.
‘I’m Fed Up.’ Frustrated With Trump, Starmer Embraces Other Allies.
Mr. Starmer’s efforts to balance those competing interests will likely be tested further if the war with Iran begins again in earnest. The cease-fire is set to expire on April 21.
In dealing with Mr. Trump, European leaders have staked out a variety of different positions, while all declining to join any offensive military action.
Spain’s defense minister, Margarita Robles, said Monday that Mr. Trump’s plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz “makes no sense.” Spanish leaders have been among the most critical of the U.S.-Israeli war.
“Since this war started, nothing makes sense,” Ms. Robles told Spain’s public television. “This is another episode in the downward spiral the world has been dragged into.”
In France, President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said on social media that “France stands ready to play its full part, as it has consistently sought to do.” He did not mention Mr. Trump’s threatened blockade but stressed “the need to restore free and unimpeded navigation through the Strait of Hormuz as quickly as possible.”
Britain and France have been talking to dozens of other countries in recent weeks in an effort to coordinate diplomatic and military options for keeping the strait open once the fighting stops.
Mr. Macron said the two countries were planning another conference to discuss those issues “in the coming days.” He added: “This strictly defensive mission, separate from the warring parties to the conflict, is intended to be deployed as soon as circumstances permit.”
Show less
April 13, 2026, 6:22 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Arsenio Dominguez, the head of the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for shipping safety and security, said Monday that the situation around the Strait of Hormuz “remains of grave concern.” Thousands of seafarers are stranded in the Persian Gulf, facing risks and psychological strain.
“Beyond the human toll, this situation is also disrupting international shipping, with broader consequences for the global economy and food security,” Dominguez said at an I.M.O. committee meeting in London, where members will discuss measures to address maritime security threats.
April 13, 2026, 6:21 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Erika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi
Iranian officials are highlighting efforts to get the country’s infrastructure up and running during the cease-fire. On Monday, the state news agency IRNA released statements from a regional director general of Iran’s railway services stating that train routes from the city of Tabriz would be restored after being damaged in airstrikes last week. Farzaneh Sadegh, Iran’s minister of roads and urban development, told state media that she was working to get domestic flights resumed.