Iran war updates: IRGC says Hormuz closed until US blockade lifted

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• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has said the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, blaming US “violations” of the ceasefire agreement.
• It said the vital shipping lane would remain closed until the US ends its blockade of Iranian ports.
• An attack on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon resulted in the death of one French soldier and the wounding of several others.
• Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group, denied all responsibility for the attack.
• Meanwhile, Israel carried out at least two strikes on southern Lebanon, despite a two-day-old ceasefire.
• Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, said the truce between Lebanon and Israel could not be “one-sided”, and that its fighters remain in the field, prepared to respond to Israeli aggression.
• US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Iran, saying it could not “blackmail” the US by using its control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Foreign Ministry of Bahrain has condemned the “terrorist” attack that killed a French soldier serving with UNIFIL, and wounded three others as a “flagrant violation” of international law.

In a statement, the ministry said it affirmed Bahrain’s solidarity with Lebanon and support for the efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

It also expressed its backing for the work of UNIFIL in maintaining peace and stability in Lebanon.

We’ve published several stories covering various aspects of the conflict in recent hours. Here are a few highlights:

• Iran reasserts control of Hormuz Strait as Trump warns against ‘blackmail’
• Israel says established a ‘yellow line’ in Lebanon, as it has in Gaza
• Watch: Mariana Mazzucato on the Iran war’s economic shock: Who pays the price?
• Trump claims on Iranian concessions trigger questions, rejections in Tehran
• Watch: Iran’s deputy FM says no date for more US talks until ‘framework’ agreed

And there’s plenty more here.

A video shows the moment Iran’s military ordered an Indian ship to abort its passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran says it has closed the strait again, calling the decision a response to the continued blockade of its ports by the United States.

Watch below for more:

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh says his country will not send any enriched uranium to the US and that the question is “not open for discussion”.

The IRNA news agency reported on Khatibzadeh’s comments, which came on the sidelines of a diplomatic meeting in Turkiye.

“Multiple messages have been exchanged between Iran and the United States, but [the US] insists on demands that Tehran considers excessive,” he said, according to IRNA.

The UN’s secretary-general has condemned the attack on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which killed a French soldier and injured three others.

“I extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends [and] colleagues of the fallen peacekeeper, and wish a full & fast recovery to the injured peacekeepers,” Antonio Guterres posted on X.

He noted that today’s attack was the third incident resulting in the deaths of peacekeepers serving in Lebanon in recent weeks.

“These attacks must stop,” he wrote. “All actors must respect the cessation of hostilities & the ceasefire.”

The Israeli army has confirmed it has carried out new attacks against what it calls threats south of the new “yellow line” in Lebanon.

Our Beirut-based correspondent Heidi Pett said that in addition to today’s continued artillery, shelling, and machinegun fire on several villages, Israel has confirmed launching two air strikes.

One, she said, targeted a group of Hezbollah fighters that Israel said were approaching the yellow line, rather than past it.

“So that actually indicates that they were to the north of it and not inside it,” Pett noted.

The second attack, she said, targeted a man who was approaching a tunnel entrance south of the yellow line.

Israel says it has “carried out a strike on him and destroyed that tunnel entrance,” Pett added, noting that the Israeli military spokesman said this was not a violation of the ceasefire.

“If you read carefully, the text of it, which was released by the US State Department shortly after it was announced, allows Israel to act in what it defines as self-defence, in addition to allowing it to continue to occupy 55 Lebanese villages,” Pett said.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has called the document an insult to Lebanon and said the group will not allow for continued Israeli attacks while waiting for diplomatic negotiations.

As a result, Pett said, the situation on the ground is much the same as it was yesterday.

“There are still many, many people in south Lebanon on the roads heading back to their villages,” she said, but many roads are also jammed with people heading back to displacement shelters, because they do not trust that the ceasefire will hold.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, has posted a statement on social media saying, “No rule of international law forbids Iran, the coastal State, from taking necessary measures to stop the Strait of Hormuz being used for waging military aggression against Iran.”

Baghaei’s statement came in response to a post by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, which said that transit through waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz “must remain open and free of charge” under international law.

Baghaei added: “And ‘unconditional transit passage’ in Hormuz? That fiction sailed the moment U.S./Israeli aggression brought U.S. military assets into the strait’s backyard.”

Oh, that 'international law'?! The one that the EU dusts off to lecture others while quietly green-lighting a U.S.-Israeli war of aggression—and looking the other way on atrocities against Iranians?!

Spare the sermons; Europe’s chronic failure to practice what it preaches has… https://t.co/Xv26JrZRnO

— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) April 18, 2026

Top Iranian commander Esmail Qaani visited Baghdad today to discuss the situation in the Middle East and its impact on Iraq with political leaders and representatives of armed factions.

Qaani heads the Quds Force, the foreign branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, formerly led by Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States in 2020.

An Iraqi official told news agency AFP that Qaani was seeking to “coordinate positions among Tehran’s allies in Iraq and to ensure that the security situation does not deteriorate during these sensitive times”.

Caught between Tehran and Washington, Iraq has been drawn into the Middle East war with strikes targeting groups linked to Iran, which in turn have claimed attacks on US interests.

In a message read on Iranian state TV, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has warned that his country’s navy was ready to inflict “new bitter defeats” on the US and Israel, as tensions escalate in the Strait of Hormuz.

Watch the video below:

President Donald Trump has left the White House to play golf, despite Iran’s re-closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockade of Iranian ports.

“We haven’t had any announcements from the president since that comment in the morning that Iran was getting a ‘bit cute’, in his words, over the Strait of Hormuz,” Al Jazeera correspondent John Holman reports, referring to how the president downplayed Tehran’s threats.

Before Trump left for the golf course, however, there reportedly was a meeting in the situation room to discuss the crisis, Holman said.

Referring to a report from Axios News, Holman said Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were all in attendance at the meeting.

“So this is obviously something, if that report is true, that they are thinking about and talking about,” Holman said, comparing it to Friday’s happier news that the strait had reopened.

“On Friday, President Trump was saying that they would get a deal within a day or two. It seemed really likely that we’d be heading back to Islamabad for the negotiations,” Holman noted, adding that there has since been no news about whether the talks are happening.

“So it’s either tit for tat in that way,” he added, referring to Iran’s response to the US blockade. “Or there is something more serious happening.”