Adam Schreck and Ramadan Tala
Updated ,first published
Dubai: The United Arab Emirates has said it has been attacked by Iran for the first time since a ceasefire began in early April.
The attacks appeared to be in response to US President Donald Trump’s latest efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important water and energy route.
The UAE Ministry of Defense has said that Iran has launched four cruise missiles, three of which were shot down and one fell into the sea. Authorities in the eastern province of Fujairah said an Iranian drone set fire to a major gas station. The British military reported two cargo ships caught fire near the UAE.
The attacks came after the US military said two US-flagged merchant ships successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz after launching a new plan to restore traffic on Monday.
The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces support President Donald Trump’s “Project Freedom,” which aims to “guide” commercial ships stranded in the Gulf by the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, and were enforcing the blockade of Iranian ports.
The intervention appeared to raise the risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Iran in the waterway that normally carries a fifth of the world’s offshore oil and gas but has been blocked for two months by the war.
CENTCOM said two US-flagged merchant ships crossed the sea while US destroyers were operating in the Gulf, adding: “The US military is fully supporting efforts to restore commercial shipping.”
Earlier, Tehran said it had forced the US warship to turn back from the Strait of Hormuz, although CENTCOM quickly denied a report by Iran’s Fars news agency that two missiles had hit the ship near the Iranian port of Jask.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran had fired a warning shot and that it was unclear whether the warship had been damaged.
Trump gave few details of the plan to help hundreds of ships and their crews who are “stranded” in the vital waterway and are running out of food and other supplies more than two months after the conflict began.
“We have told these States that we will guide their Ships safely out of these blocked Waterways, so they can go about their business freely and properly,” Trump said in a post on his Social Truth website on Sunday (Washington time).
“Project Freedom” will start on Monday morning in the Middle East, he said, adding that his representatives had discussions with Iran that could lead to something “very positive for all”.
Trump, who has previously downplayed the US role in ships stranded in the Gulf, described the operation as a humanitarian gesture but threatened that any intervention would be “dealt with forcefully”.
Iran’s joint command of the armed forces responded by warning American forces to withdraw from the sea.
It will “react strongly” to any threat, it said, telling commercial ships and oil tankers to refrain from any movement in the absence of coordination with Iran’s military.
“We have repeatedly said that the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands and that the safe passage of ships needs to be coordinated by the armed forces,” Ali Abdollahi, head of the joint forces command, said in a statement. “We warn that any foreign force, especially the aggressive US military, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran’s effective closure of the strait, imposed after the US and Israel started war on February 28, has shaken the global market and caused energy prices to rise.
It was not immediately clear which countries the US operation would help or how the operation would take place.
The Joint Maritime Information Centre, a US-led naval task force, said the US had set up an “enhanced security zone” south of normal shipping lanes and urged sailors to cooperate closely with Omani authorities “due to the expected volume of traffic”. The port sits between the territory of Iran and Oman.
The center warned that passing near normal routes, “should be considered extremely dangerous due to the presence of mines that have not been fully measured and mitigated”.
The US Central Command said it would support the effort with 15,000 troops and more than 100 land and sea aircraft, as well as warships and drones. But the operation would not include US Navy ships escorting commercial vessels, Axios writer Barak Ravid said in a post on X.
Early on Sunday (Washington time), a cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz was said to have been attacked by a small vessel, the British military’s Maritime Operations Center reported, while another ship was hit by “unidentified missiles”. No injuries were reported.
It is the first attack reported in the area since April 22.
The first vessel was an unidentified cargo ship traveling north near Sirik, Iran, east of the strait, the British monitor said. Iran denied the attack, Iranian outlets Fars and Tabnak reported, and said the passing ship had been stopped for a document check as part of surveillance.
The second ship was an oil tanker that was reportedly hit on Sunday night while leaving Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
Iran has been blocking almost all shipping from the Gulf other than its own for more than two months. Some ships attempting to cross the strait have reportedly been fired upon, and Iran has seized several other ships.
Iranian officials have claimed they control the waterway and that ships not affiliated with the US or Israel can pass if they pay tariffs, defying freedom of navigation guaranteed by international law. Last month, the US imposed its blockade of ships from Iranian ports.
Despite the four-week ceasefire, the threat level in the region remains significant.
Trump announced the operation hours after Iran said it was reviewing America’s response to it the latest proposal to end the war and to make clear these were not nuclear talks.
Iran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium have long been a key issue in tensions with the United States, but Tehran wants to delay nuclear talks until a later phase.
His 14-point proposal calls for the US to lift sanctions against Iran, and end sanctions America’s naval blockade of Iranian ports, withdraw forces from the area and cease all fighting, as well as Israeli operations in Lebanon, according to the Nour News and Tasnim agencies, which have close ties to Iran’s security agencies.
Trump on Saturday expressed doubt that the proposal would lead to a deal.
Washington wants Tehran to give up its stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which the US says could be used to make a bomb.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, although it is willing to negotiate some restrictions to restore sanctions. It had agreed to such restrictions in the 2015 agreement that Trump abandoned.
Repeatedly saying he is in no rush, Trump faces domestic pressure to break Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which has cut 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supply and driven up U.S. gasoline prices.
Trump’s Republican Party faces the risk of voter backlash over high prices in November’s midterm congressional elections.
AP, Reuters
Get the scoop straight from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
