The Denver Gazette Wire Services

DUBAI • The U.S. military began a blockade of Iran’s ports on Monday, while Tehran threatened to retaliate against its Gulf neighbors’ ports after weekend talks in Islamabad on ending the war broke down.

A U.S. official said there was continued engagement with Iran, and forward motion on trying to get to an agreement. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said efforts are still under way to resolve the conflict.

President Donald Trump said Iran had been in touch Monday and wanted to make a deal but that he would not sanction any agreement allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world.”

Since the United States and Israel began the war on Feb. 28, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee.

Trump has said Washington would block Iranian vessels and any ships that paid such tolls and that any Iranian “fast-attack” ships that went near the blockade would be eliminated.

Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defense, said foreign military efforts to police the strait would escalate the crisis and instability in global energy security.

NATO allies, including Britain and France, said they will not take part in the blockade and stressed the need to reopen the waterway, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil normally passes.

The talks between the U.S. and Iran in Pakistan, the first direct meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ended on Sunday without an agreement.

Despite that, Vice President JD Vance, who led the U.S. delegation, told Fox News on Monday the U.S. “made a lot of progress” by communicating to Tehran where the U.S. “could make some accommodation” and where it would remain inflexible.

He said Trump is adamant that any enriched nuclear material must be removed from Iran and a mechanism must be established to verify that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Tehran “moved in our direction, which is why I think we would say that we had some good signs, but they didn’t move far enough,” Vance said, without disclosing details.

CEASE-FIRE UNDER STRAIN

The cease-fire that halted six weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes looked in jeopardy, with only a week left to run. Meanwhile, oil prices climbed back to $100 per barrel.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the blockade would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations” entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

“The blockade will not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations,” Central Command said in a note to seafarers seen by Reuters on Monday.

Two Iranian-linked tankers, the Aurora and New Future, left the strait laden with oil products Monday before the deadline, according to LSEG data.

An Iranian military spokesperson called any U.S. restrictions on international shipping “piracy,” warning that if Iranian ports were threatened, no port in the Gulf or Gulf of Oman would be secure. Any military vessels approaching the strait would violate the cease-fire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.

Trump said Iran’s navy had been “completely obliterated” during the war, adding that only a small number of “fast-attack ships” remained.

ISRAEL TARGETS HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON

Trump had paused the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign last week after threatening to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” unless it reopened the strait after the two sides agreed on a cease-fire.

Israel has continued to bombard Lebanon and on Monday Israeli troops launched an attack it said was intended to seize a key south Lebanon town from Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel and ‌the U.S. have ⁠said the campaign against Hezbollah was not part of the ceasefire, while Iran has insisted it is.

Iran has brought new demands, including recognition of its control of the waterway, lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of forces from U.S. military bases across the Middle East.

The U.S. Navy has 16 warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Middle East, a defense official said. A second defense official said no American warships are in the Persian Gulf, which forms most of Iran’s coastline. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.