Iran and US Impose New Measures on Strait of Hormuz Traffic After Attacks

Iran and the United States offered clashing accounts on Saturday of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz while continuing to trade threats over the waterway. Both sides maintained contact through mediators even as tensions rose after attacks on tankers earlier in the week.

Iranian state media released a statement attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen or heard from since a clerical body selected him as supreme leader in March.

He referred to the February 28 assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war launched by the US and Israel. "We pledge to avenge your pure blood, and the blood of all the martyrs of these two wars, upon the criminal and disgraced killers," the statement said. " Ali Khamenei was buried on Friday at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad.

President Donald Trump stated he believes he is first on Iran's "kill list" and posted on Truth Social that missiles are locked and loaded against Iran. "Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran," Trump wrote.

He said he considers the repeatedly breached ceasefire over. Qatari mediators visited Iran on Friday, and Iran's foreign minister traveled to Oman on Saturday for de-escalation talks. Unnamed senior Trump administration officials told US media that Iranian officials privately described attacks in the strait as the work of an errant hardline faction.

Iran has established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority to coordinate transit and stated that foreigners will have no share in managing the waterway. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said traffic had recovered to about 50 percent of pre-war levels before the latest strikes.