Iran attacked three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz over two days this week, shattering a fragile ceasefire and prompting the United States to yank back oil sanctions waivers that Tehran had won barely weeks ago under a bilateral memorandum of understanding.
The strikes on Monday and Tuesday mark the clearest sign yet that Iran has no intention of honoring the diplomatic framework it signed in June, and that the Trump administration is prepared to impose real costs when the agreement is violated.
A senior U.S. official told Fox News Digital that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control would revoke the sanctions waivers, calling Iran’s conduct in the strait “wholly unacceptable.” The official added that the MOU with Iran “is entirely performance-based. Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior.”
Good behavior has been in short supply.
On Monday, July 6, Iranian forces struck the Al Rekayyat, a Qatari liquefied natural gas carrier, in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media claimed the vessel had ignored “repeated warnings” from Iranian forces. British maritime authorities confirmed a vessel was hit by a projectile near the coast of Oman, and the attack reportedly caused a fire on board. No fatalities were immediately reported.
The same day, the Wedyan, a Saudi-flagged crude oil tanker operated by Bahri, sustained damage near the strait. The cause was not immediately clear, though U.S. officials confirmed the vessel was struck. Fox News Digital reached out to both Bahri and the Saudi Embassy in Washington for comment.
On Tuesday, U.K. Maritime Trade Operations reported that yet another tanker transiting the strait had been hit by an “unidentified projectile.” UKMTO said the vessel sustained structural damage but reported no casualties or environmental impact. The organization advised vessels to exercise caution and report suspicious activity.
Breitbart reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been warning civilian ships via maritime radio that “our missiles and drones are ready to fire at you.” The Qatari Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks, with spokesman Majed al-Ansari demanding that Iran “immediately cease all practices that undermine regional security or threaten the safety of international maritime navigation.”
The MOU signed in June was supposed to open a 60-day negotiating window. Both sides agreed to halt military operations while pursuing a broader peace agreement. Iran committed to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors, through which roughly one-fifth of all seaborne oil passes, to commercial shipping. In return, Tehran received limited economic relief, including the oil sanctions waivers now being revoked.
The ink was barely dry before Iran began testing the deal’s limits. On June 25, Iran attacked the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely with a one-way drone as it transited the strait along the Omani coast. U.S. Central Command called that strike “a clear violation of the ceasefire” and conducted retaliatory strikes on Iranian missile, drone, and coastal radar sites. Just The News noted that Iran’s military had warned hours before that June 25 attack that ships crossing the strait without Iranian authorization “will be dealt with.”
That pattern, Iran issuing threats, then following through with force, then claiming provocation, has repeated itself with grim regularity. The regime has sought to collect transit fees from commercial vessels and claims a role in managing strait traffic, a position the Trump administration has flatly rejected, insisting the waterway remain open to free international navigation.
When global leaders praised the emerging peace framework just weeks ago, the hope was that economic incentives would restrain Tehran’s worst impulses. That hope has collided with reality.
Washington did not limit its response to revoking sanctions waivers. The New York Post reported that U.S. Central Command launched strikes against more than 80 Iranian targets, including air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 IRGC small boats in and near the strait. CENTCOM described the scope as four to five times larger than the retaliatory strikes conducted in late June.
“Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
That statement from U.S. Central Command, as reported by the Washington Examiner, left no ambiguity about how the Pentagon views Tehran’s conduct. The Examiner also confirmed that the Treasury Department rescinded the temporary sanctions waivers, a 60-day general license issued on June 21, ending the economic lifeline Iran had secured under the MOU.
President Trump had already signaled his willingness to escalate. Speaking at a Fourth of July address at Mount Rushmore, he described Iran as “dying to settle” after months of military pressure. He also noted the U.S. had given Tehran “a week off for a funeral because we’re nice”, a reference to the White House pausing negotiations while Iran observed funeral ceremonies for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose burial was scheduled in Mashhad.
Trump has previously warned of expanded military operations in the Strait of Hormuz if Iran walks away from negotiations. Breitbart reported that the president reiterated his position this week, saying he would “rather make a deal, because I don’t want to affect 91 million people. We can knock down their bridges in one hour.”
The commercial toll of Iran’s aggression is already visible in the data. Ship-tracking firm Kpler reported that daily traffic through the Strait of Hormuz had stabilized at roughly 30 to 60 vessel crossings, a fraction of the approximately 140 crossings per day that occurred before Operation Epic Fury. The ceasefire was supposed to restore confidence and bring traffic back toward normal levels. Instead, Iran’s renewed attacks threaten to reverse even the modest recovery.
For the oil-dependent economies of the Gulf, and for global energy markets, those numbers carry weight. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all depend on safe passage through the strait to move their exports. When Iran fires on a Qatari LNG carrier and a Saudi crude tanker in the same day, it is not merely violating a ceasefire. It is threatening the economic lifeline of its own neighbors.
The IRGC’s pattern of harassment predates the MOU. In February, Iran sent six armed gunboats to harass a U.S.-flagged oil tanker in the strait and deployed a drone toward the USS Abraham Lincoln. A U.S. F-35C shot down the drone, and a destroyer escorted the tanker to safety, as the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time. That incident threatened to derail planned nuclear negotiations before they even began.
The regime’s willingness to escalate, even when it stands to lose sanctions relief, face military strikes, and alienate its own negotiating partners, raises a straightforward question about whether any deal with this government can hold.
Fox News Digital reported that neither the White House nor the Pentagon responded to requests for comment on the latest attacks. U.S. Central Command, which leads military operations in the Middle East, also declined to comment on the current strikes, though it had no difficulty labeling the June 25 attack a ceasefire violation.
The unnamed U.S. official who confirmed the sanctions revocation did offer one forward-looking note: “Our negotiators continue to work in good faith towards a final deal.” Whether that statement reflects genuine diplomatic progress or bureaucratic inertia remains to be seen.
Several open questions hang over the situation. The identity of the third vessel struck on Tuesday has not been publicly disclosed. The specific weapons used in Monday’s attacks have not been confirmed. And it remains unclear whether the 60-day negotiating window established by the MOU is still operative or has effectively collapsed under the weight of Iran’s violations.
Britain’s recent move to crack down on the IRGC through new legislation suggests that Washington is not alone in recognizing the threat Iran’s paramilitary forces pose to international security and commerce.
The Trump administration’s decision to revoke the sanctions waivers sends a clear message: concessions to Iran are not gifts. They are conditional. And when Iran fires on commercial ships in the world’s most important energy corridor, twice in 12 days, three times in two days, the conditions are not met.
Critics of the original MOU warned that offering Iran economic relief before securing verifiable compliance was a gamble. The events of this week suggest those critics had a point. Iran pocketed the sanctions waivers, briefly reopened the strait, then resumed attacking the very ships the agreement was supposed to protect.
The administration, which halted strikes and announced a deal framework just weeks ago, now finds itself clawing back the concessions it offered in good faith. That is not a failure of American diplomacy. It is a failure of Iranian compliance, and the administration is right to treat it accordingly.
Diplomacy requires two honest parties. When one side signs a ceasefire and then fires on tankers during a funeral pause it requested, the other side is not breaking the deal by enforcing its terms.
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