President Donald Trump suggested that peace talks with Iran could resume in a day or two as the US military chokes off the country's maritime trade in a move to get Tehran to the negotiating table.
Trump ordered a naval blockade targeting vessels headed to or from Iranian ports after US-Iranian peace talks in Islamabad on April 11-12 failed to produce an agreement to end the war, which began with US and Israeli air strikes on Iran on February 28.
In an interview with Fox Business News that aired on April 15, Trump said he thinks the war could be over "very soon," while Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told a weekly press briefing in Tehran that since the talks ended, Iran has been exchanging messages with the United States via Pakistan.
"I think it can be over very soon. It will end soon," Trump said in the Fox interview in comments that came after he told the New York Post that negotiators could meet again in the next couple of days.
The clock is ticking on a two-week cease-fire agreed by the United States and Iran on April 7 and Trump said he has no plans to extend the deal.
Pakistan is said to be seeking to facilitate a new round of talks while Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation in the first round, raised the prospect of further meetings by saying "a lot of progress" was made at the April 11-12 talks.
"The ball is in the Iranian court," according to Vance, who said disagreements over Iran's nuclear program ultimately ended the talks without an accord.
Later, at an event in the southern US state of Georgia, Vance said Trump wanted to make a "grand bargain" with Iran but there was a lot of mistrust between the two countries.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian has blamed Washington for the failure of the talks, but he also has said that "diplomacy is the preferred path to resolving disputes."
One of the most contentious issues has been Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for about one-fifth of the world's oil and gas shipments before the war began.
After the Islamabad talks broke up without a deal, Trump announced a US blockade targeting ships bound to or from Iran. The strait connects Europe with Asia via the Suez Canal and is considered one of the most important maritime trade routes in the global economy.
The US Central Command, which is responsible for operations in the region, said in a post on X that during the first 24 hours, no ships made it past the US blockade and six merchant vessels complied with direction from US forces to turn around to reenter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman.
"A blockade of Iranian ports has been fully implemented as US forces maintain maritime superiority in the Middle East," Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, said in a post on X late on April 14. "In less than 36 hours since the blockade was implemented, US forces have completely halted economic trade going into and out of Iran by sea."
At the same time, data from tracking services indicated that at least four ships, two of which had recently called at Iranian ports, passed or were passing through the 30-kilometer-wide Strait of Hormuz in the hours after the blockade came into force at 10 a.m. US Eastern Time (2 p.m. UTC) on April 13.
A Liberian-flagged ship that delivered corn to the Iranian port of Bandar Imam Khomeini passed Iran's Larak Island in the strait a few hours after that, and a Comoros-flagged tanker, which was carrying methanol and had left the Iranian port of Bushehr on March 31, exited the strait around the same time, the AFP news agency reported, citing data from Kpler.
Also citing tracking services, Reuters separately reported that three Iran-linked vessels that transited the strait were not headed for Iranian ports and were not affected by the blockade. Two of the three vessels are under US sanctions and one of those two is Chinese-owned, Reuters reported.
Iran on April 15 threatened to resume attacks in the Gulf region if the blockade threatened the safety of Iranian cargo vessels and tankers, saying it would amount to a violation of the cease-fire agreement.
The war with Iran, which effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to some 20 percent of the world's oil and gas transit, has wreaked havoc on world energy prices, while the halt in shipments of other billions of dollars worth of commodities that flow through the narrow shipping lane, has threatened economies around the globe.
One nation that has benefitted from the restriction of oil shipments is Russia, which has seen sanctions on it over the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine eased to help bolster supplies.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a trip to Beijing on April 15 that Russia is able to make up for an energy shortage in China caused by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
"Russia can, without a doubt, compensate for the shortfall in resources that has arisen" for China and "other countries that are interested in working with us," Russia's top diplomat told a news conference.
Beijing, meanwhile, has been looking to play a more visible role in diplomacy around the war in the Middle East as tensions between Tehran and Washington evolve.
While some reports, including comments from Trump himself, have suggested China played a part in encouraging the recent cease-fire talks, it remains unclear how central a role Beijing played in pushing Tehran to the negotiating table.
