DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S
By Mohammed Yassin
President Donald Trump backtracked on plans to charge ships for using the Strait of Hormuz, saying Tuesday that Gulf countries would instead invest in the United States. Another wave of U.S. strikes on Iran, and Iranian attacks on shipping and American allies, left an interim peace deal in tatters.
That agreement was supposed to reopen a waterway that is key to world energy supplies and give negotiators time to hammer out a permanent end to the war. Instead, fighting has once again engulfed the region, threatened the global economy and brought warnings to commercial airlines.
The U.S. carried out another wave of strikes ahead of its planned reimposition of a blockade on Iran’s ports, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation.
A fifth of all traded crude oil and natural gas passed through the Strait of Hormuz before the war, when it was open to all without tolls. When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, it effectively shut the passage by attacking and threatening ships — a tactic that proved its greatest strategic advantage. That sent the price of oil, fertilizer and other goods soaring
