Iran's parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned on Monday that the Gulf's oil and gas infrastructure is "sprawling, accessible, and exposed" and that American energy companies "share that exposure", two days after US forces disabled or destroyed three Iranian crude tankers in retaliation for missile fire at two US warships. Tehran says it will declare a restricted zone outside the Strait of Hormuz within days. Brent crude reached US$97.50 a barrel on Tuesday morning, its highest in seven weeks.
"Strike our assets and you get struck," Ghalibaf wrote on social media, in a post Reuters reported early on Tuesday AEST. It answered US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had written on Saturday that "Iran's oil tanker fleet is defenseless" and that the fleet could be hit anywhere from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.
US Central Command said on Saturday that an aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer had "evaded multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks", and that in response its forces "permanently disabled" the tankers Downy, off Kharg Island, and Stark 1, near Jask, and "completely destroyed" the unladen Kylo in the Gulf of Oman. No US personnel were hurt. Iranian state television reported that four missiles hit the tanker at Kharg, which handles about 90 per cent of Iran's crude exports, and that the crew was evacuated. Admiral Brad Cooper, the Central Command commander, said the US would "impose an even higher economic cost" on the Revolutionary Guard for shooting at its ships.
Iran's foreign ministry called the strikes "a war crime". On Sunday Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told state television that a zone would "begin from the line of the U.S. naval blockade, extend toward the Strait of Hormuz, and from this side continue into the Persian Gulf", and that "any ship that enters this area with the intention of passing through the Strait of Hormuz and is identified will be placed on our sanctions list". Ghalibaf said "the era of proportionate responses has come to an end". The Revolutionary Guard also claimed to have hit an uncrewed US vessel, which the US military called "a total lie". By Tuesday afternoon no zone had been formally declared.
What is passing through the strait is itself disputed. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said about "9 million barrels of oil a day are getting through". Shipping data from Kpler, cited by Reuters, show an average of 10 commodity vessels a day transited over the past ten days, the lowest since May. Rezaei said Iran was selling "one million, one and a half million" barrels a day.
The war began on 28 February with US and Israeli strikes on Iran. An April ceasefire led to a memorandum signed on 17 June that was to lift the US naval blockade and reopen the strait, but President Donald Trump declared it over on 8 July after the two sides traded attacks. After a lull through August, the US struck Revolutionary Guard sites across southern Iran last week over a sea-mine threat, and the US blockade of Iranian ports remains in place.
On the other front, Israeli strikes on Kfar Rumman in southern Lebanon on Monday killed at least 12 people, including two children, Lebanon's health ministry said. Eleven died in a residential building and one was a medic killed in a drone strike on a vehicle. The ministry puts the toll since 2 March at more than 4,300. Israel said it struck people "transferring weapons" and was "reviewing the report that uninvolved individuals were harmed". Tehran says any settlement with Washington must include an end to Israeli attacks in Lebanon.
The cost is arriving in Australia at the bowser. The national average unleaded price rose to 205.5 cents a litre in the week to Sunday, Australian Institute of Petroleum data show, and Westpac's consumer sentiment survey, released on Tuesday, recorded pump prices back above $2 "for the first time since April, reflecting higher global energy prices and the end of the temporary halving in fuel excise tax". That halving, introduced in April because of the strait's closure, ended on 3 August. The government has made no statement on the weekend's escalation. Foreign Minister Penny Wong's most recent Middle East release, on 27 July, raised Bahrain and Kuwait to "do not travel", and Smartraveller still advises Australians in the region who want to leave "to make plans to do so".
As of Tuesday the strait is neither open nor closed in any settled sense. The US says nine million barrels a day are passing, the shipping data count ten ships, and Iran says the rules of passage are about to change again.
