US President Trump denies talks with Iran and lays claim to Strait of Hormuz | BBC News

Hello, I'm Anita McVeigh and this is the Iran War Today, bringing you up to date with all you need to know on the US-Israel war with Iran. Let's start with some of today's key developments. Donald Trump says there are no talks taking place or planned with Iran after the 60-day memorandum of understanding between the sides came to an end. The US President also lays claim to the Strait of Hormuz, posting a map labelling the key waterway as US territory. Meanwhile, Qatar says it won't mediate wider talks to end the war until a deal is done between Iran and Oman on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Another strike on a vessel in the Strait as a ship is hit by an unknown projectile, killing one member of its crew. Iran says it's finished cleaning up one of multiple oil spills in the Strait of Hormuz, blaming US military action for the environmental disasters. Iranian leaders say America should be charged for what they say are trillions of dollars worth of damage. President Trump says there are no talks taking place or planned between the United States and Iran. He's posted on his Truth Social platform saying there are no talks or conversations going on or scheduled with the Islamic Republic of Iran, adding that the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz remains in full force and that the Strait is open and operating. The denial of any ongoing talks comes despite previous claims of back-channel conversations and the president's threat on Monday to bomb US ally Oman if it, in his words, gets in the way of US negotiations. All that as Qatar, which has been a key mediator in peace talks between Iran and the US, now says it's waiting for a deal on the Strait before it returns to any wider talks. Iran's top negotiator has said the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until the United States meets Tehran's demands, including lifting a naval blockade. Well, let's speak now to our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman, who's in Washington. So Tom, on Monday, President Trump says that the US will bomb Oman if it gets in the way of US negotiations with Iran. Now he says there are no talks. So what's going on? Well, I think this just is another sign of how President Trump is at this absolutely strategic impasse over this entire issue. You know, what we've had, remember, over the last couple of weeks is the revelation that the Americans simply don't have the ammunition stockpiles to relaunch the kind of military operation that we saw at the start of this war. Although the administration rejects that, that has been widely evidenced in terms of what US officials have been saying. So that means he's had to fall back on the kind of rhetorical and diplomatic pressure that he'd been using over recent weeks and in the run-up to this war as well. And I think we're seeing him basically say things that are meant to have an extreme effect on the situation, on the decisions being made. So, you know, saying he's going to bomb Oman, an absolutely key and core US ally in the region that is mediated between the Americans and the Iranians. He now says that he's claimed the Strait of Hormuz as US territory, something he simply legally has no authority or right to do in an international waterway and for multitude other reasons. But again, that's meant to have impact on the way the Iranians are thinking because he wants them to look at him as being unpredictable. And so I think that's why we're hearing all of this and therefore saying that negotiations are completely over. He's meant to try and push the Iranians and at the moment what he's trying to prevent is them agreeing with the Omanis that there will be tolling of the Strait of Hormuz, that ships will be forced to pay by the Iranians to pass that waterway. And Tom, to what extent is this war influencing the latest approval ratings for President Trump, which at 33% are his lowest ever, and in turn having an impact on his approach to the war? Well, his approval ratings are underwater. I mean, this is catastrophically low levels, particularly in the run up to a major set of elections in the United States, the midterm elections in November. That, you know, the latest Ipsos Reuters polling puts his approval rating at 33%. Now, if that continues into the midterms, that has the potential to be extremely damaging for the Republicans. I think one other element in that polling is about Americans' attitudes towards the war. And you're now seeing a very significant majority of Americans overall, including a very significant majority of Republicans, who believe that this war is going to go on for a long time, that there will be no sort of quick conclusion. Now, that tells you something about sentiment. And given that that is intimately linked to the rise in petrol prices, and Americans are now paying at least, you know, a dollar, up to two to three dollars more per gallon for petrol or gas, they call it here, than they were before the war, you know, that will feed through if it continues into more underlying inflation and the price of groceries and so on. So this is politically really difficult and damaging for the president. He has been saying he doesn't care about the midterms. He wants to project the idea to the Iranians that this isn't, you know, the electoral element is not going to affect his thinking when it comes to the war and the diplomacy. I think the reality, of course, is the reverse. OK, Tom Bateman, thank you very much. So let's look in a bit more detail at what's going on between the two sides. Are the US and Iran talking about ending the war, or are they not? Whilst Donald Trump has said there are no talks or conversations going on, on Monday he told Fox News that his administration had a back channel for discussions with officials in the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Those claims were dismissed by Iran's foreign ministry, though, which called the reports fabricated. Let's speak to Bahman Karbasi from BBC Persian, the Persian language service of BBC News. So, Bahman, what do we know about this idea of back channel conversations going on? It seems that the connection was made back in May through America's allies in Kurdistan, Iraq's Kurdistan, who also are close to IRGC, but the extent of which is not very clear. And it seems at the end the message that Americans were trying to get across was, are the diplomats and the chief negotiator that are talking to us do they have the backing of IRGC, or are they speaking for their part of the government, because Iran's government is seen as being fractured? And the message that came back from IRGC apparently was, no, whatever that they are expressing to you in negotiations is the unified position of the Iranian government. So that seems to have ended whatever back channel there was. And the Iranian government wants to project unity through these talks. And therefore, despite the disagreements that exist internally between different fractions of the regime, there is certainly an attempt to say what finally comes out of the negotiator's mouth, whether it's Mr. Arakchi, the foreign minister, or Mr. Qalibaf, the head of the parliament, is what the government has decided to be said. So it doesn't seem that back channel is going to produce anything or did produce much back in May. And Qatar, previously a key mediator between the US and Iran, is for the moment pulling back. Why is it doing that now? Because both sides are digging in. The Iranian chief negotiator in the last 20 minutes issued a tweet saying that Americans think they can squeeze out more concessions with economic pressure, concessions that are not in the memorandum of understanding. And that simply is not going to happen. He went further and accused and said the secretary of defense and secretary of treasury of Donald Trump administration are way over their head, out of their league. And therefore, everybody needs to understand this, what he called clown car is not going to produce a solution. So basically, the message out of Tehran is, what you couldn't achieve with 10 years of sanctions in two wars is not going to be achieved with more sanctions and more economic pressure. And that is just not going to happen. The only way is to go back from their perspective, to memorandum of understanding and basically agree to what they had agreed before. That's something that doesn't seem like the Donald Trump administration, or at least the president himself is in mood for right now. Okay, Bahman, thank you very much. Bahman Kalbasi from BBC Persian. Well, the Strait of Hormuz continues to be a central focus of any attempt to end this war, with both Iran and the US claiming they have control of the vital waterway. Donald Trump posted this map on truth social labeling the Strait of Hormuz as a new US territory. He's previously threatened to declare the crucial route, which lies between Iran and In response to that post, Iran's deputy foreign minister said his country would correct the delusions of this delusional man. Since the start of the war, Tehran has largely blocked the strait. It's become a dangerous route. One person was killed when a vessel was hit by an unknown projectile on Monday night, the latest in a series of attacks on ships in the region. Traffic through the strait was already significantly down, but dropped to almost nothing over the weekend as the 60-day memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran came to an end. And with me now is Thomas Copeland from BBC Verify, who's been looking at the attacks in the strait. Thomas, what do we know about the ship that was struck today? So this was a cargo vessel, a bulk carrier. It's called Minoan Dignity. It's actually owned by a Greek company that's seen three of its ships hit since this conflict began. It was struck by an unknown projectile directly into the engine room. We know that one of the crew has died. We understand the Omani Coast Guard were involved in evacuating the rest. We don't know absolutely for sure the source of this projectile. Iran hasn't claimed responsibility in this case so far. What we do know is that it was exiting the strait along this southern US-backed route through Omani territorial waters, rather than this northern route through Iranian territorial waters. And it's been ships that are using that route that have typically been the ones that have been the target of the Iranian strikes. And Thomas, what's the wider picture of strikes on ships for this month? So far this month, we've seen up to about 11 attacks or attempted attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. What's interesting is up until this point in the conflict, a pattern had started to develop, which was that more and more ships would use this US-approved route through Omani waters. Iran would then strike those ships. The US would then strike Iran. And we would go back around through this cycle. We've actually seen a period of now up to 11 attacks or attempted attacks on ships, and no significant US response. The US has fired on one vessel that it said was violating the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. But we haven't seen a significant retaliation against the attacks in the Strait of Hormuz that we've seen since the start of this month. Now, give us a sense, if you would, of what BBC Verify does to actually try to get information about these attacks and to that information? It's a really, really opaque area of reporting. We sort of have to pull on four different sources to build a picture of what's actually happening. The first is kind of official sources, perhaps from the Iranians or the Americans. We'll often call on UK Maritime Trade Operations, which runs a kind of voluntary reporting service throughout the region. Ships, when they're attacked, will call it into UK MTO, and then they'll issue an alert. Next thing, we'll speak all the time to sort of private maritime security and risk companies. They might give us a bit more information. We can match that up. Perhaps we'll get a name of a ship. Once we have a name, we can jump to ship tracking platforms, try to work out where the ship has come from. Typically, often it is the case that ships will switch off their location broadcasters as they're moving through the Strait of Hormuz. But it might give us important information about what the ship was carrying. Maybe it's crude oil. Maybe it's a cargo vessel. And also, who owns the ship? We can then speak to the owners, perhaps directly. And the final thing is satellite imagery. Now, we've been using that in the last number of days to report on some of the sort of environmental impacts as a result of these ships being hit. Oil spills and engine fuel spills have been washing up on the shores of Iran, for example. And sometimes when ships are immobilised, we can capture a ship in a specific area over a number of days as satellites pass overhead. Okay. Fascinating to find out how you piece that all together, Thomas. Thank you very much. Thomas Copeland from BBC Verify. Well, as Thomas mentioned, any damage to ships in the Strait of Hormuz can have serious environmental impacts in the region. There have been two major oil spills in the Gulf over the last week, including this one of Oman's Hulaniyat Islands and another affecting Iran's Qeshm Island. Iran's foreign ministry has blamed the pollution on US military operations. Authorities say they've now cleaned up the spill along parts of Qeshm Island's southern coast, but claim trillions of dollars of damage has been caused by oil spills like this. Dr. Kayvan Hosseini, energy and environmental expert at the University of Southampton, says pollution in the region can be devastating. They are actually very concerning, particularly because of the way they are happening. The Persian Gulf is a shallow, semi-enclosed sea connected to the Arabian Sea and the wider ocean through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. This means this pollution in the region can potentially travel across national boundaries and affect much wider marine environments. Specifically about Qeshm Island, we have very sensitive habitats, mangrove forests we have there, important fishing grounds, and nesting beaches for critically endangered hawkbill turtles. So this is not simply oil appearing on the beach. It is pollution reaching an area where there is wildlife, ecosystems, and also local communities which are very close to marine environments.