It didn’t take long for the Iranians to give Donald Trump what he may have wanted all along. For the last several days, Trump sat on the Iranian response to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) negotiated through Pakistan, Turkey, and the Gulf states. He also stepped up enforcement of the blockade, which may have pushed Ahmad Vahidi into escalating responses, leading to the exchange of hostilities over the last 24 hours.
This morning, the Iranians declared talks over and the war back on. They pledged to expand the attacks on international shipping into the Red Sea as an escalation, clearly hoping to keep playing a global-economy card that flopped in the Strait of Hormuz. However, the IRGC used the Israeli actions in Lebanon and Gaza as their pretext:
NEW: Iran has suspended all diplomatic communication and messages with the United States, according to Iranian state media. The decision was reportedly due to Iranian opposition to the Israeli strikes against Hezbollah.
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) June 1, 2026
Iran’s negotiating team will suspend peace talks with the U.S. over Israel’s ongoing war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and other perceived violations of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Tasnim, which is close to the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said Iran would halt “talks and the exchange of texts through a mediator” given the “continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Lebanon.”
Echoing statements earlier in the day from Iranian officials, Tasnim said Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon was included in the ceasefire, which it said was being violated “on all fronts.”
The US has made clear all along that it rejected linkage to the war in Lebanon, although the Trump administration has negotiated a ceasefire there separately. The problem in Lebanon is that Hezbollah refuses to recognize the ceasefire and refuses to disarm, despite agreeing to disarmament as part of a ceasefire agreement they made earlier. That agreement required Hezbollah to retreat from the sub-Litani and Bekaa Valley regions, which they have made no effort to do, and to cede all military control to the Lebanese government. That has been a demand that has gone unenforced for over 20 years.
Nevertheless, the IRGC now refuses to negotiate unless Israel ceases action against Hezbollah, and against Hamas in Gaza as well despite their own refusal to comply with disarmament agreements they made last year. The IRGC says it will expand the war by authorizing the Houthis to attack shipping in the Red Sea:
An Iranian news outlet closely linked with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps indicated Monday that the Iranian regime had given its Houthi rebel allies in Yemen the nod to start attacking commercial shipping via another key Middle Eastern waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb strait. …
Iran and its regional proxy forces “have placed on their agenda the complete blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the activation of other fronts, including the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” Tasnim said, calling the decisions a bid to “punish” Israel and its supporters for the ongoing Israeli operations in Lebanon.
Iran had threatened at least three times during the war to have its Houthi allies attack the shipping lanes of Bab el-Mandeb.
That’s a threat that the Saudis take seriously, and for good reason. The Houthis have disrupted operations in this channel before, and now their oil output goes through the Red Sea via its East-West Pipeline rather than loading tankers to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
However, the situation has changed since Iran imposed those risks in the Red Sea. First, the Houthis required Iranian targeting information provided by its blue-water naval vessels to threaten shipping in this region. The US has destroyed Iran’s blue-water navy, and the Houthis lack sophisticated targeting for their weapons without spotters. Also, the US and Israel have destroyed much of that infrastructure at various times, and now the Houthis are even more exposed to retaliatory fire now that the Iranian navy and air force have been neutralized. Plus, the Bab el-Mandeb strait is nowhere near as vulnerable to shutdowns as the Strait of Hormuz. The geography is much simpler and the international waterways more defensible.
Plus, as it turns out, the US has been slowly freeing up the Strait of Hormuz over the last few weeks:
American forces in recent weeks have helped coordinate the passage of dozens of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. officials, even as travel through the waterway remains risky amid stalled negotiations to end the war with Iran.
U.S. Central Command has guided around 70 commercial ships through the strait, traveling into and out of the Persian Gulf, in the last three weeks, one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The U.S. officials added that most of the vessels had turned off their transponders to avoid detection when going through the narrow waterway.
The officials declined to say what type of vessels were going through and what route they took, but one official indicated that at least one route was not close to the Iranian coastline. Ships passing near Iran without obtaining Iranian approval face the threat of an almost-certain attack by Iranian drones or missiles, U.S. officials said. Shipping analysts say the U.S.-guided crossings appear to follow routes that are closer to Oman.
Essentially, the US restarted Project Freedom on the down-low. This hasn’t restored the Strait to its prewar levels of commerce, but it’s a sign that shippers may have more confidence in American naval power … or are just bored with the threats from Iran:
Before the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran in late February, well over 100 commercial ships a day passed through the strait. So the U.S.-coordinated passages — an average of three a day over the three-week period — do not represent a big comeback for shipping. And because U.S.-guided crossings take place with transponders turned off, known as “dark” passages, shipping analysts say they cannot independently verify how many may have taken place.
Still, a steady passage of ships under U.S. guidance would suggest that some shipowners are willing to take the risk to get in and out of the Persian Gulf, where many vessels have been stranded for weeks, losing money and leaving their crews in trying conditions.
Do the Houthis really want to join this war? An attack on Saudi oil interests could precipitate a ground-force invasion of Yemen by the Saudis, who have a serious military capable of doing very serious things to Iranian proxies. The Houthis have no air cover, have no navy to speak of, and use missiles with relatively crude guidance systems that will have no firm targeting profiles. The US has massive naval and air power already assembled in the region to do to the Houthis what we have already done to the Iranians.
Put all of this together, and it’s likely a bluff. Ahmad Vahidi is attempting to rescue what’s left of Hezbollah in Lebanon by escalating the threat against global shipping, hoping that Trump wants a deal badly enough to put a leash on Israel. The problem may be that Trump could want an excuse to smash Iran a little more to emphasize that he’s not going to back off his redlines, and if so, Vahidi may have just handed him an excuse to do it, even over the objections of our coalition partners in the Gulf. We’ll see what Trump does next, but the Iranians have forced the issue now, and Trump has to make a decision. Stay tuned.
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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