President Trump has extended the naval blockade of Iran after the regime decided to skip the peace talks scheduled to be held in Pakistan. With the two-week ceasefire set to expire on Wednesday, President Trump extended the truce indefinitely while enforcing a maritime blockade to stifle Tehran’s global oil exports.
Iranian negotiators failed to appear for the second round of negotiations in Islamabad amid reports of infighting within the regime. “Iran’s leadership remained divided over whether to participate in a new round of peace talks,” Axios reported Tuesday.
The ceasefire extension is intended to give the battered regime a ‘short window’ to get its act together and respond to the U.S. offer. As Axios wrote, quoting U.S. Officials on Wednesday, “President Trump is giving Iran’s warring factions a short window to unify behind a coherent counter-offer — or the ceasefire he extended Tuesday ends.”
With most of Iran’s pre-war leadership eliminated, President Trump noted that the remnant of the regime’s leadership was “seriously fractured.”
“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” the president said in a statement released by the White House
“I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other,” The White House statement added.
According to President Trump, the regime was pleading for the restoration of oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. blockade is costing Iran half a billion dollars a day, he suggested.
“Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open so they can make $500 Million Dollars a day (which is, therefore, what they are losing if it is closed!),” President Trump posted on Truth Social.
“They only say they want it closed because I have it totally BLOCKADED (CLOSED!), so they merely want to ‘save face.’ People approached me four days ago, saying, ‘Sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait, immediately,’ he concluded. “But if we do that, there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included!
With the blockade in place, the Trump administration is exerting maximum economic pressure on the regime’s ability to fund the war.
Unable to ship oil through the Kharg Island facility, the regime would be forced to shut down its oil wells — a process not easily reversible, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent assured on Wednesday. Around 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports are handled through the Persian Gulf island.
“In a matter of days, Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in. Constraining Iran’s maritime trade directly targets the regime’s primary revenue lifelines,” Secretary Bessent wrote on X.
The campaign of “Economic Fury” will “systematically degrade Tehran’s ability to generate, move, and repatriate funds,” he added.
The “Operation Economic Fury,” as The Wall Street Journal dubbed it, could cost Tehran an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars each day. The campaign incorporates a range of measures, from a naval blockade to sanctions that could cripple Iran’s oil industry.
The WSJ reported Tuesday:
The U.S. is expected to keep up the economic pressure on Iran, even as President Trump says he will hold off on resuming military strikes for now, according to U.S. officials. The pressure campaign, dubbed “Operation Economic Fury” by administration officials, involves sanctions, a blockade of Iranian ports and an effort to seize Iran-linked ships in waters around the world.The blockade alone could cost Iran more than $400 million a day, according to some estimates. U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. troops in the Middle East, has said it is halting economic trade going in and out of Iran by sea, which fuels 90% of Iran’s economy. The Treasury Department has also announced a series of new sanctions targeting Iran’s oil-smuggling network, proxy groups and weaponry pipeline.
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