Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

Spanish leader Sánchez to stay in power after resignation drama

Scotland leader Humza Yousaf resigns in latest setback for independence 

Middle East conflict live updates: Blinken calls proposed Israeli cease-fire deal ‘extraordinarily generous’

The Rangers swept the Capitals, and it’s time for the new core to take charge

Jayden Daniels is latest in Washington’s checkered history of first-round QBs

Hunter Biden attorney threatens litigation against Fox News

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Harsh deportation tools are just fine with many Americans

Soldiers reunite with their pets from overseas: ‘It meant everything to me’

Chiropractor works on giraffe, is nuzzled: ‘Giraffes are just giant dogs?’

An SUV was in flames on the highway. Strangers saved the driver.  

Where seas are rising at alarming speed 

The new face of flooding

In photos: Tornadoes wreak havoc in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa

Is student loan debt an emergency? Take our quiz.

Humans might need to re-engineer the climate

The Fed’s fight against inflation needs to lose the dot plot

Carolyn Hax: Is checking his phone the best way to prove he isn’t lying anymore?

Ask Amy: Boyfriend’s CPA dad did my taxes wrong for years

Miss Manners: I think kindergarten graduations are ‘ridiculous’

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Facts in the Trump courtroom v. ‘facts’ in the court of public opinion

Meta’s oversight body prepares to lay off workers

An AI blood test purports to diagnose postpartum depression

A TikTok ban could also end short-form video as we’ve come to know it

The Rick Steves guide to life

The sad, stale state of in-flight vegetarian meals

Is Southwest about to end its free-for-all seating?

Trump trial live updates: Trump found in contempt for violating gag order

Trump Hush Money

ISTANBUL — The perilous contest between the United States and Iran for influence in the Middle East escalated dramatically on Thursday as two tankers were targeted in suspected attacks near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global oil shipments.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for the “blatant assault” on the vessels and said the United States would defend itself and its allies against Iranian aggression in the region. But he provided no evidence that the explosions had been the work of Iranian forces.

The blasts appeared to be a coordinated attack, damaging the hull of a Japanese-owned tanker and striking a Norwegian-owned vessel, which caught fire and was left adrift in the Gulf of Oman.

The incidents were similar to suspected acts of sabotage carried out against tankers near the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah last month and looked to be the latest salvo in the mounting confrontation between the United States and Iran. As the Trump administration has tightened economic sanctions on Iran after withdrawing last year from the historic nuclear deal, Iran and its allies have responded with calibrated attacks in the Persian Gulf area, Iraq and Saudi Arabia aimed at underscoring the potential cost to U.S. interests, including the international oil trade, experts say.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the incidents Thursday as “suspicious,” and Iran’s naval forces said they were investigating the “accident” in the Gulf of Oman.  At the United Nations, the Iranian mission denied any involvement and called the U.S. claim “inflammatory” and “Iranophobic.”

The crews of both vessels were forced to abandon ship. A U.S. defense official said the USS Bainbridge, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer that was in the area, took on board 21 crew members from the Japanese vessel, the Kokuka Courageous.

The blast on the Japanese ship appeared timed to undermine diplomatic efforts by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who was wrapping up a high-stakes visit to Tehran. He met there with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and was seeking to help mediate potential talks between U.S. and Iranian officials. Abe had called his talks in Tehran “a major step forward toward securing peace and stability in this region,” the Kyodo news agency reported.

[Japan’s Abe asked Iran to release U.S. citizens, report says, but the response is unclear]

The second vessel, owned by Norway’s Frontline, was “suspected of being hit by a torpedo,” an official with Taiwan’s state oil refiner, CPC Corp., which chartered the vessel, told the Reuters news agency. 

The tanker, called the Front Altair, was carrying naphtha, a flammable petrochemical product that was loaded at a port in the UAE and was destined for East Asia, news agencies reported. The ship’s 23 crew members — 11 Russians, 11 Filipinos and one Georgian — were rescued by a nearby vessel and transferred to an Iranian navy ship, then taken to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Speaking to reporters, Pompeo said that the U.S. assessment of Iranian involvement is based on intelligence, the type of weapons used and the level of expertise needed, and that no Iranian-backed militia in the region has the resources or proficiency to pull off such a sophisticated operation.

He said the impetus behind the attacks was the administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” of sanctions that U.S. officials say are designed to get Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program and its support of militias in various neighboring countries.

“Our policy remains an economic and diplomatic effort to bring Iran back to the negotiating table at the right time and encourage a comprehensive deal that addresses the broad range of threats,” Pompeo said. “Iran should meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not with terror, bloodshed and extortion.”

Win McNamee

In New York, the U.S. representative to the United Nations blamed Tehran for the blasts during a meeting of the Security Council, drawing a sharp response from the Iranian mission.

“Iran categorically rejects the U.S. unfounded claim,” the mission said in a statement.

“The U.S. economic war and terrorism against the Iranian people as well as its massive military presence in the region have been and continue to be the main sources of insecurity and instability in the wider Persian Gulf region and the most significant threat to its peace and security,” the statement continued.

“Neither fabrications and disinformation campaigns nor shamelessly blaming others can change the realities. The U.S. and its regional allies must stop warmongering and put an end to mischievous plots as well as false flag operations in the region.”

Shortly after Pompeo spoke in Washington, senior U.S. officials showed photographs to reporters of the damaged tanker Courageous with what the Navy identified as a suspected magnetic mine attached to its hull. The unexploded weapon was probably applied by hand from an Iranian fast boat, one official said, and is thought to be the same kind of weapon used to blow a hole elsewhere in the same tanker and to do more- serious damage to the other ship, the Front Altair, two officials said.

The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity because many elements of the investigation remain secret, said the type and timing of the attack bear Iranian hallmarks, but U.S. officials cannot yet say with certainty where the mines were manufactured or exactly how they were laid.

“There’s not too many ways in which this can be done,” one official said. “Very few that don’t involve an individual physically placing it on the ship.”

The U.S. Central Command late Thursday released a video and timeline that suggested U.S. military assets observed Iranian vessels returning to the Courageous to retrieve the unexploded mine.

“At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine” from the Courageous, said Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman for Central Command.

U.S. officials said several nations are consulting about how to respond. One option may be to provide military escorts for commercial tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz, one official said, although no decision has been made.

“As the threat evolves, it’s incumbent on us to reevaluate our presence,” said one senior U.S. official.

The U.S. military has dispatched a P-8 Poseidon, an anti-ship, anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft, to the area in response to the incident, a defense official said.

Senior U.S. officials have frequently been in touch about the incident since Thursday morning, the official added. U.S. Central Command is sending additional troops and weaponry to the Middle East.

[The oil route that could become central to mounting tensions between Iran and the U.S.]

The Gulf of Oman links the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf. The gulf has been a flash point for tensions between Iran and the United States and its Arab gulf allies.

“The tension in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf is now as high as it gets without being an actual armed conflict,” said Jakob P. Larsen, head of maritime security at the Baltic and International Maritime Council, the world’s largest international shipping association. “The increase in attacks and the escalated threat to seafarers is an urgent concern to the industry.”

U.S. officials say the administration’s pressure campaign is aimed at isolating Tehran, curbing its support for regional proxies, restricting its ballistic missile program, and ultimately bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table. But some experts say the recent tensions have underscored the limits of that policy.

[Trump administration considers responses to potential Iranian attacks, including troop increase]

In a climate of hostility, the tanker incidents could bring the parties closer to the brink of violent confrontation. 

“This is a way station to a wider conflict breaking out between Iran and the United States,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst and Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. “If Iran was behind it, it is very clear the maximum pressure policy of the Trump administration is rendering Iran more aggressive, not less.” 

The blasts could also reflect a widening split between pro- diplomacy officials in Iran and hard-liners opposed to further negotiations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The paramilitary organization, which boasts land, air and sea forces, answers only to Khamenei and is responsible for Iran’s external military operations.

Iran’s security services, including the IRGC, “have a decades-long history of conducting attacks and other operations aimed precisely at undermining the diplomatic objectives of a country’s elected representatives,” the political risk firm Eurasia Group said in a briefing note Thursday.

“The attacks could have been designed to put an exclamation point on Iran’s warnings to Abe about the risks of instability in the region,” the note said. About 80 percent of Japan’s oil imports come from the Middle East and pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The blasts occurred 24 nautical miles from the nearest IRGC naval base, one U.S. official said. IRGC ships are frequently present in that area but had not until recently begun to harass or impede shipping, the official said.

“It’s clear that there is a pattern of Iranian naval activity in and around commercial shipping lanes that is inconsistent with their prior behavior,” the official said.

The attacks are part of Iran’s response to tightening U.S. sanctions, one official said. He described the Iranian view this way: “If we can’t ship oil, no one can.”

<email>erin.cunningham@washpost.com</email>

<email>carol.morello@washpost.com</email>

Gearan and Morello reported from Washington. Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world


Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news


Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in Public Service, with the staff of The Washington Post, 2019

The Bob Considine Citation for Excellence, Overseas Press Club of America, 2019

Best in Business for feature reporting, Society of American Business Editors and Writers, 2012 

American University of Paris, BA in international and comparative politics 

Erin Cunningham is an editor on the Foreign desk, overseeing The Washington Post’s international news coverage on weekend days in Washington. She joined The Post in 2014 as a correspondent in Cairo and has reported on conflict and political turmoil across the Middle East and Afghanistan. 

Erin Cunningham

Associated Press Virginia staffer of the year

Allegheny College, BA in English and History

Anne Gearan is a White House correspondent for The Washington Post, with a focus on foreign policy and national security. She covered the Hillary Clinton campaign and the State Department for The Post before joining the White House beat. She joined the paper in 2012.

Anne Gearan

Michigan State University, BA in journalism

University of Southern California, MA in journalism

Carol Morello is the diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, covering the State Department. She previously wrote about demographics and the census. She has worked at The Post since 2000. Before that, she was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and USA Today.

Carol Morello

The Washington Post

Contributor

AFP/Getty Images

Getty

GULF-SHIPPING-OIL-US

War In Ukraine

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

Middle East

World

iptc-media/politics/government/defence/military_equipment/military_weaponry

iptc-media/religion_and_belief

iptc-media/politics/international_relations/diplomacy

iptc-media/politics/international_relations

iptc-media/religion_and_belief/religious_belief

iptc-media/conflict_war_and_peace/act_of_terror

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/transport/waterway_and_maritime_transport

iptc-media/conflict_war_and_peace/armed_conflict/war

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/religion_and_belief/religious_belief/Islam

iptc-media/conflict_war_and_peace

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/transport

iptc-media/disaster_accident_and_emergency_incident

iptc-media/politics

iptc-media/disaster_accident_and_emergency_incident/accident_and_emergency_incident

iptc-media/politics/political_process

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Airlines_legacyaux_rhc

advertising/B2_Asian Content_legacyaux_8xg

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Business_legacyaux_hws

advertising/B2_Congressional Elections_legacyaux_r48

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Defense_legacyaux_yxn

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Government & Policy_legacyaux_mza

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Consulting_legacyaux_s68

advertising/B2_International Conflicts & Relations_legacyaux_5l0

advertising/B2_Politically Active - DO NOT REMOVE_legacyaux_lmp

advertising/B2_Politics_legacyaux_8f3

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Renewable & Alternative Energy Sources_legacyaux_euk

advertising/B2_Young Professional / International Businessman_legacyaux_r5x

advertising/B2_Middle East Content_legacyaux_tde

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: Northrop Grumman KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CME KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

prism://prism.query/site,/world/middle-east&limit=20

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis of breaking Middle East news stories. Includes news coverage on Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/world