US military says it will begin blockade of Iranian ports on Monday

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday the American navy would swiftly begin a blockade of ships entering or leaving the Strait of Hormuz, after US-Iran ceasefire talks in Pakistan ended without an agreement.

US Central Command (CentCom) announced that it will blockade all Iranian ports beginning on Monday at 10am Eastern Time.

CentCom said the blockade will be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations”. It said it would still allow ships travelling between non-Iranian ports to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

Mr Trump wants to weaken Iran’s key leverage in the war after demanding that it reopen the strait to all global traffic on the waterway that was responsible for 20% of global oil shipping before fighting began.

Traffic in the Strait has been limited even in the days since the ceasefire. Marine trackers say more than 40 commercial ships have crossed since then.

A US blockade could further rattle global energy markets. “It’s going to be all or none, and that’s the way it is,” Mr Trump told Fox News.

Mr Trump said on social media that he told the navy to “seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No-one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas”.

He said other nations would be involved but did not name them.

Freedom of peaceful navigation is a basic principle of international maritime trade.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard later said the strait remained under Iran’s “full control” and was open for non-military vessels, but military ones would get a “forceful response”, two semi-official Iranian news agencies reported.

During the 21-hour talks, the US military said two destroyers had transited the strait ahead of mine-clearing work, a first since the war began. Iran denied this.

Mr Trump’s plan to use the navy to block the strait is unrealistic and he will have to concede on some issues with Iran, Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at Kings College London, said.

“There isn’t any tool in the toolbox in terms of the military lever that he could use to get his way.”

Mr Trump said Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were at the core of the talks’ failure. In comments to Fox News, he again threatened to strike civilian infrastructure.

Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who led Iran’s side, addressed Mr Trump in a new statement on his return to Iran: “If you fight, we will fight.”

The face-to-face talks that ended early on Sunday were the highest-level negotiations between the longtime rivals since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Neither indicated what will happen after the ceasefire expires on April 22.

“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon,” Vice President JD Vance, leading the US side, said.

Iranian negotiators could not agree to all US “red lines”, a US official said.

These included Iran never obtaining a nuclear weapon, ending uranium enrichment, dismantling major enrichment facilities and allowing retrieval of its highly enriched uranium, along with opening the Strait of Hormuz and ending funding for Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi rebels.

Iranian officials said talks fell apart over two or three key issues, blaming what they called US overreach.

Mr Qalibaf, who noted progress in negotiations, said it was time for the United States “to decide whether it can gain our trust or not”.

Pakistani foreign minister Ishaq Dar said his country will try to facilitate a new dialogue in the coming days.

Iran said it was open to continuing dialogue, state-run IRNA news agency reported.

The European Union urged further diplomatic efforts. The foreign minister of Oman, located on the Strait of Hormuz’s southern coast, called for parties to “make painful concessions”. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin “emphasised his readiness” to help bring about a diplomatic settlement in a call with Iran’s president.

Iran’s nuclear programme was at the centre of tensions long before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.

The fighting has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 2,055 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states, and damaged infrastructure in half-a-dozen countries.

Tehran has long denied seeking nuclear weapons but insists on its right to a civilian nuclear programme.

The landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which Mr Trump later pulled the US out of, took well over a year of negotiations.

Experts say Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, though not weapons-grade, is only a short technical step away.

An Iranian diplomatic official denied that negotiations had failed over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Inside Iran, there was new exhaustion and anger after months of unrest that began with nationwide protests against economic issues and then political ones, followed by weeks of sheltering from US and Israeli bombardment.

Elsewhere in the region, airstrikes calmed over the past day except in Lebanon.

Iran’s 10-point proposal for the talks called for a halt to Israeli strikes on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has said the ceasefire did not apply there, but Iran and Pakistan said it did.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited parts of southern Lebanon under Israeli control on Sunday, for the first time since the current fighting.