Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
In a post to Truth Social, the president said the U.S. intercepted a ship called the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman and gave it a warning to stop. The vessel was fired upon when it did not stop. The U.S. has been operating a naval blockade of ships entering and exiting Iranian ports since last week.
“The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom,” Trump said in the post. “Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity.”
The seizure is an apparent escalation of the blockade, and comes after Iran fired upon commercial vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz earlier on Sunday.
U.S. envoys led by Vice President JD Vance were expected to travel to Pakistan on Monday for a second round of peace talks with their Iranian counterparts, a White House official told CNBC. Iran later rebuffed those talks, according to a state media report.
Trump warned on Sunday that if Iran did not agree to the U.S.’s terms to end the conflict, he would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.”
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