Al Jazeera

 

By Enes Abuomer, Tracy J. Jawad and Zsombor Peter

    Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, says Tehran will declare a restricted zone near the Strait of Hormuz and announce a new shipping route agreed on with Oman for the waterway “in the coming days”.

    Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warns of a “heavier and more painful response” to any new attacks after the US military struck and destroyed three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday.

    Israel also continues to bomb Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreement brokered by the US, killing at least four people and wounding another 20 in air raids on Sunday.

Why is Iran planning to enforce a restricted zone near Hormuz

    We have more from Stephen Zunes at the University of San Francisco.

    He said Iran’s plan for a restricted zone could be linked to its pending deal with Oman on shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz.

    If the deal with Oman is something that is workable and that the US could accept, Iran could “pull back” from enforcing the restricted zone, Zunes said. If not, then Iran has “something ready to try to make it more problematic for Washington” to refuse the deal with Oman.

    Zunes said a restricted zone could make “things more complicated because the American forces – which are already overstretched – would have to end up policing and enforcing a larger area”. It could also “make shipping companies and their insurers even more reluctant to make such a dangerous crossing”.

    As for the Gulf, Zunes said Iran’s neighbours have a “lot at stake in defusing the conflict”.

    “If this Omani-Iranian agreement really does lead to a substantial increase in shipping, that will obviously be a positive thing,” he said. “I think they might even be willing to pay a toll or transit fees or whatever they want to call them – even though of course the US would strongly object to that in principle. But I don’t doubt that the Omanis and the other Gulf states have been in consultation throughout this process, and they certainly had input in shaping the Omani position,” he added.

Canada says working with partners to ‘maintain significant pressure’ on Iran

    Canada has condemned Iran’s “destabilizing actions in the Middle East”, including threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and “pursuit of illicit nuclear activities”.

    Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a joint statement that Ottawa is “working closely with partners, including within G7, to maintain significant pressure on Iran”.

    The ministers said this includes “support for efforts led by the United States, as well as France and the United Kingdom, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and continued sanctions on Iran, such as those announced under U.S.-led Operation Economic Outcast”.

    They added that Ottawa has sanctioned 492 Iranian individuals and entities under the country’s Special Economic Measures Act and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act since 2010. They said they “will continue to pursue additional measures” alongside partners.

    Iran, for its part, has denied pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

US lawmaker hits back at Trump’s ‘small potatoes’ remark

    Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator, has described Trump as “dangerously delusional” after the US president dismissed the war on Iran as “small potatoes and “not a big thing”.

    “18 Americans are dead. Billions in damage to our bases. Missile supplies catastrophically low. Farm bankruptcies at record highs. Families struggling to pay $5 gas prices. Iran stronger than ever,” Murphy wrote in a post on X.

    “But ‘small potatoes’.

    “Our president is dangerously delusional.”

    Trump made the comments at the White House on Friday after a reporter posed a question about Vice President JD Vance saying he would not use the word “war” to describe the US war on Iran.

Yemen’s Houthis claim shooting down Saudi CH-4 drone over al-Jawf

    Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree says the group’s forces shot down a Saudi CH-4 armed reconnaissance drone over al-Jawf province.

    Saree said the aircraft was carrying out “hostile activities” over the Khabb wa ash Sha’af District when it was brought down with an unspecified weapon.

Oil prices rise after US and Iran trade fire in Strait of Hormuz

    Oil prices have extended their gains as renewed strikes between the US and Iran on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz raise concerns of prolonged supply disruptions, according to Reuters.

    Brent crude futures climbed 0.54 percent to $96.80 a barrel early this morning, while West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.72 percent to $92.14 a barrel, it said.

    The gains come after Iran claimed attacks on three US-affiliated vessels and three oil tankers using an “unauthorised” route in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran said the strikes were in response to US attacks that destroyed three Iranian crude oil tankers. Washington said those strikes were in retaliation for Iranian attacks on its warships.

    Since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28, the price of Brent crude has risen more than 30 percent.

Death toll from Yemen clashes tops 300 as civilians flee

    More than 300 fighters and civilians have been killed since renewed fighting erupted in Yemen on Thursday, AFP reports, citing a tally based on military and medical sources from both sides.

    The clashes have centred on western Taiz and southern Hodeidah, where Houthi forces launched a major offensive towards government-held areas near the Red Sea coast and the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

    Government officials told AFP that 84 of their troops were killed between Saturday afternoon and early Sunday, mostly in missile attacks. Houthi military sources said 57 of their fighters were killed over the same period.

    The fighting has also displaced civilians.

    The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said an estimated 1,790 households had fled heavy shelling and clashes in the Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi districts of Taiz.

    Shalev Biton lost his leg after being wounded during Israel’s 11-day military offensive on Gaza in 2021.

    Stephanie Westbrook, a sport boycotts campaigns coordinator for PACBI, a founding member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told Al Jazeera the campaign is “an absolute affront to the Palestinians”, noting that “Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world”.

    The World Health Organization estimates that more than 5,000 traumatic limb amputations have taken place in Gaza since October 2023, when Israel began its genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

What we know about Iran-Oman agreement on Hormuz route

    As we’ve been reporting, Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, says Tehran will announce a new shipping route in the Strait of Hormuz that it agreed on with Oman in the coming days.

    Here’s what we know:

    Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said in late August that Iran and Oman had agreed that the new route’s entry “would be through our territorial waters, and part of the exit route would also be through our territorial waters”.

    The transit corridor is temporary and would be 11.3km (7 miles) wide, he said.

    But key details remain unclear, including the precise coordinates of the route, when ships can start traversing the strait safely, and how revenues would be generated.

    Specific operational protocols are also not known yet, such as whether any vessels or flags will be barred from using the route.

    Gharibabadi has also said that the strait will not open despite the agreement and has called on the US to fulfil its commitments under an interim peace deal signed in June, including sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets.

Yemen joins condemnation of Israeli plan to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza

    Yemen’s internationally recognised government has condemned Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza.

    In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the plan “a blatant violation of international law and an attack on the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people”, and urged the international community “to assume their legal and moral responsibilities and to confront these dangerous calls”.

    The government, it added, “affirms that the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory, and stresses the need to preserve the unity of the Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.

    The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkiye and Egypt also condemned the plan in a joint statement earlier.

    Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir revealed details of the plan on Thursday, saying that the roughly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza will be removed within seven years.

    Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz also said on Wednesday that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza remains the “only solution” and that US President Trump has not cancelled his plan to depopulate Gaza, but has only “frozen” it.