US renews strikes on Iran; tankers come under attack in Strait of Hormuz

CAIRO/DUBAI/WASHINGTON - The U.S. military carried out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Monday as President Donald Trump reinstated a blockade of Iranian shipping and proposed charging a 20% fee to guard the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Central Command said it began strikes at Trump’s direction just after the U.S. president told the “Hugh Hewitt Show” that Iran would be hit “very hard tonight, and we’re going to hit them hard tomorrow. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.” He later told reporters at the White House that the U.S. was attacking Iranian capabilities in the strait.

The UAE Ministry of Defense later said Iranian cruise missiles struck two Emirati oil tankers, the Mombasa and Al Bahiyah, while transiting the southern lane of the strait in Omani territorial waters, wounding an Indian crew member and injuring eight others. Six of the wounded were Indian nationals and two were Ukrainian nationals, the ministry said.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said a tanker had been hit by an unknown projectile while traveling 40 nautical miles northeast of Oman’s Qalhat and that all crew were safe.

Reuters could not immediately verify whether the UKMTO report referred to the same incident as the one reported by the UAE Ministry of Defense. Iran has not commented on the latest attacks.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two “offending” supertankers had been hit and disabled in the strait after ignoring repeated warnings and turning off navigation systems, Iranian media reported.

The IRGC’s statement did not name the vessels or say whether they were the same tankers cited by the UAE ministry. But it accused the U.S. of “inciting vessels to use an illegal route” and warned that cooperation with the “aggressor enemy” would result in damage, delays in reopening the waterway and a global energy crisis. 

Bahrain’s air defense systems intercepted and destroyed Iranian aerial attacks over the kingdom, Nabeel Alhamer, media adviser to Bahrain’s king, said in posts on X.

“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE,” Trump had said earlier on Monday on Truth Social.

“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT’, but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped.” 

Iran’s top joint military command said the U.S. had no role in determining the future of the waterway and would not be allowed to intervene. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi wrote on X that Tehran was the guardian of the strait and would remain so “forever,” adding in response to Trump’s comments that: “20% is of course too much. We will be fair.” 

‘Hostile’ US vessel

Soon after the U.S. military announced renewed strikes on Iran, Iranian media reported explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran’s Kish and Qeshm islands and on Abu Musa Island in the Gulf.

Iran’s Fars news agency said residents in the city of Jam in Iran’s Bushehr province also heard several explosions but that the exact location of the blasts was not clear. No casualties were reported. Iranian media reports of explosions continued for more than three hours.

Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province was hit by U.S. projectiles early on Tuesday, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported, citing a provincial security official, adding that four people were wounded and rescue operations were underway. A loud explosion was also heard in Iran’s southern city of Bushehr, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency.

Iran’s state TV cited the Iranian army as saying that it targeted a “hostile” U.S. vessel with cruise missiles and U.S. facilities and equipment in Kuwait with drones. Iranian media also said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shot down a U.S. MQ-1 drone over Hormuz, while sirens sounded early on Tuesday in Bahrain - home to another U.S. military base.

The incidents, which followed earlier exchanges of missile and drone attacks, extended the hostilities that followed Iran’s announcement at the weekend that it was closing the vital waterway, casting further doubt on an interim deal to halt the war and driving oil prices higher.

The U.N. shipping agency pushed back against Trump’s proposal, saying it opposes any fees for straits used in international navigation and stressing that there is no legal basis for introducing mandatory tolls on strait transits.

Trump has previously suggested the U.S. could charge tolls on shipping through the strait, but has not done so, and it remains unclear whether he would follow through this time.

The U.S. Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center said the blockade would take effect at 2000 GMT on Tuesday and apply to all vessel traffic regardless of flag, covering the entire Iranian coastline, including ports and oil terminals. 

It said the measure would not impede neutral transit passage through the strait to or from non-Iranian destinations, and that humanitarian shipments would be permitted subject to inspection.

The U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi and U.S. Consulate General in Dubai have canceled consular appointments through Wednesday due to the regional security situation, the embassy said in a security alert.

Site near nuclear facility named as target

Trump said that the U.S. would take out Pickaxe Mountain in Iran, as he warned that Washington would continue to hit the country hard.

“We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready,” Trump said in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

“We’re watching (Pickaxe Mountain) closely. We see no activity there. They’re not doing well with their nuclear situation. Every time we hear about it, we blow it up. So they don’t like talking about it. But we’ll probably give Pickaxe a shot relatively soon,” Trump said.

Pickaxe Mountain, located near Iran’s heavily damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility, is a heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes that experts assess as beyond the reach of the most powerful bunker buster bombs in the U.S. arsenal.

Alerting Congress

Trump has sent Congress formal notification that hostilities against Iran resumed on July 7, a letter his administration sees as opening a new 60-day window to use the military in the region without congressional approval.

“I directed this military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States’ national security and foreign policy interests,” Trump said in the letter, dated July 10, and seen by Reuters on Monday.

The letter outlines Trump’s actions, including ordering a two-week ceasefire on April 7, which was extended, and his administration’s efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

$250 million a day

Before the conflict began in February, around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas traffic passed through Hormuz daily, delivering more than 15 million barrels of fuel to global markets worth at least $1.2 billion. If the U.S. were to impose a 20% fee, it could generate around $240 million a day.

The war, launched by the United States and Israel, has destabilized the Gulf and spread across the region, with Iran attacking U.S. bases in multiple countries. Thousands of people have been killed in the war, mainly in Iran and Lebanon.

Oil prices jumped more than 9% on Monday, with Brent futures posting their biggest single-day dollar gain since April 2, and their highest settlement since June 12. U.S. crude futures made their largest daily gain since April 29 to settle at their highest since June 15.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose to $83 a barrel, 15% higher than its prewar price.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States remains 30% higher than before the war. It was $3.87 a gallon Monday, up from $3.80 a gallon a week earlier, according to the AAA motor club. Diesel was $4.88 a gallon, up from $4.76 a gallon.

The S&P 500 dropped about 1% in midday trading on Monday. Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas from the Middle East, fell broadly. Stocks in Europe were also lower.

Worries about energy-induced inflation have pushed up yields on U.S. government bonds, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note hovering around 4.57% Monday, about a tenth of a percent higher than a week ago – a big move in a short time for that market.

U.S. officials said around 20 vessels had been escorted through the strait in the previous 24 hours, although ship-tracking data showed little traffic moving. MarineTraffic said on Monday that vessel activity through the strait declined by about 52% between July 10 and 12 compared to the previous week.

Related developments

School strike inquiry: Democratic senators led by Kirsten Gillibrand of New York called on Monday for the Trump administration to disclose within the next week the findings from a U.S. military investigation into a Feb. 28 strike at a girls’ school in Iran.

Reuters first reported on March 5 that an initial, internal U.S. military investigation showed U.S. forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab on the opening day of the war with Iran.

The group of more than two dozen U.S. senators, including the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, requested in a letter that the U.S. military finalize its investigation, brief Congress and present a plan to ensure such a mistake does not happen again.

“There is no justification for withholding an unclassified accounting of what happened, what went wrong, and what the Department is doing to prevent recurrence,” their letter said.

Asked for comment, a Pentagon official told Reuters: “The investigation is ongoing. We do not have any updates to announce at this time.”

The strike killed more than 175 children and teachers, Iranian officials say. The lawmakers’ letter notes that it would make it the U.S. military’s largest civilian casualty incident since 1991, when it mistakenly bombed a shelter in Iraq, killing more than 400 civilians.

Archived copies of the Iranian school’s official website show the school is adjacent to a compound operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader.

Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, has reported that U.S. officials responsible for creating targeting packages appeared to have used out-of-date intelligence.

U.S. Admiral Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, which is directing the war effort, testified in May that the investigation was “complex,” given that the school was located on an active Iranian cruise missile base.

Trump, however, has cast doubt on whether the U.S. military will ever know what happened, given the amount of military activity at the start of the war.

“Somebody said it was our missile, maybe it wasn’t our missile but I have seen nothing to lead me to believe it was,” Trump remarked on June 24, adding: “I don’t think it was us.”

Iranian officials have pointed to the strike on the school as a U.S. war crime. The U.S. has said it never intentionally targets civilians.

In the letter, the lawmakers ask Cooper and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit an unclassified version of the findings to Congress and the U.S. public. They also ask for a prevention and remediation plan “that identifies the specific corrective actions the Department will take to ensure this does not happen again.”

“The United States military has a legal and moral obligation to take all feasible precautions to prevent civilian harm,” the letter said.

“When a U.S. strike kills civilians, the Department owes Congress, the American people, and the victims’ families a clear accounting of what happened and a credible plan to prevent future failures.”

Tech export conviction: An Iranian-born engineer was convicted on Monday of U.S. charges that he conspired to illegally export technology with potential application in military drones to a company in Iran whose customers included the IRGC.

Mahdi Sadeghi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and resident of Natick, Massachusetts, who had worked at Analog Devices before his December 2024 arrest, was found guilty by a federal jury in Boston on three counts, including conspiracy to export technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The jury found Sadeghi not guilty on two other counts alleging violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani scheduled his sentencing for October 13.

Sadeghi’s lawyers declined to comment. They had argued at trial that he was innocent and had no reason to risk his career and the life he had built in the United States by breaking the law.

Prosecutors charged Sadeghi alongside an Iranian businessman they say ran a company that made a navigation system used in Iran’s military drones, including one that struck a U.S. outpost in Jordan in January 2024. The attack by Iran-backed militants killed three U.S. service members and wounded over 40 others.

The businessman, Mohammad Abedini, was arrested in Italy at the request of the U.S. government but was released in January 2025 after Iran detained an Italian journalist, who was also freed later, in an incident that drew international attention.

Sadeghi, 43, proceeded to trial alone on charges against him, none of which concerned the attack in Jordan. The judge overseeing the case barred prosecutors from introducing evidence about the Jordan incident at his trial to avoid “unfair prejudice.”

Instead, the case focused on what prosecutors said were Sadeghi’s efforts to illegally procure and export technology, particularly sensors, from Analog Devices to Abedini’s Iran-based company, San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak Co, or SDRA, which made the navigation system.

Prosecutors said that at Sadeghi’s recommendation, Analog Devices began working with a Swiss-based company that Abedini founded in 2019 and shipped it electronic parts, unaware it would funnel the Massachusetts-based global semiconductor company’s technology to Iran.

Defense lawyers argued that all the business dealings were legitimate and transparent, and that Abedini’s Swiss company was a genuine firm focused on motion tracking technology rather than the “fake front” prosecutors portrayed.

Sadeghi’s trial had been delayed for several months out of concern about picking an impartial jury after the war in Iran began. Defense attorney Daniel Marx in his opening statement on June 23 had pressed jurors “to judge Mr. Sadeghi based on the evidence in this courtroom, not what is going on in the rest of the world.”

Gaza aid woes: A United Nations official has said Palestinian militant group Hamas was disrupting aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, placing further hardship on its civilians already grappling with the humanitarian crisis in the war-shattered enclave.

In a statement late on Sunday, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said humanitarian workers had to halt activity on Saturday after armed men entered a food distribution point in northern Gaza and assaulted two truck drivers in a World Food Program warehouse.

“These incidents are not isolated. They are completely unacceptable and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction, including smuggling attempts, targeting and abusing humanitarian operations,” said U.N. Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov.

“They are placing humanitarian workers at risk, disrupting the delivery of life-saving assistance, and further constraining the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate at a time when civilians across Gaza continue to face immense and pressing humanitarian conditions,” Alakbarov said.

Hamas on Monday denied the allegations. Its media office said the police forces involved were on a law enforcement operation after receiving reports of smuggled cigarettes and mobile phone components concealed inside aid parcels.

“The incident at the World Food Programme (WFP) food distribution center in the Abu Rashid area of Jabalia Refugee Camp was neither a ‘raid,’ an ‘attack,’ nor an ‘obstruction’ of humanitarian work, as falsely claimed,” Hamas said.

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 9:47 PM.