President Donald Trump raged on Truth Social on Friday as the fate of his fragile peace deal with Iran is unclear amid violence in the region.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps announced the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed, despite the opening of the crucial waterway being one of the immediate actions outlined in Trump’s deal.
Iranian officials said it should remain closed until Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon as Israel carried out strikes on Friday after four of its soldiers were killed, according to the IRGC-linked news agency.
Switzerland postponed U.S.-Iran talks that had been set for Friday amid the fresh round of violence. The president fumed in response in a pair of posts on Truth Social.
“We didn’t meet out of desperation, Iran did. They are FINISHED! We’ll play out the 60 days. They get no money, not ten cents!” he fumed in one post.
Trump also took aim at Democrats in another post as his deal with Iran has come under fire by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
“The War has diminished Iran! It doesn’t, any longer, have an Air Force, a Navy, Antiaircraft Equipment, Radar, or practically anything else, and yet the Dumocrats say that Iran is better off now than it was four months ago,” he wrote. “Can you imagine getting away with that??? How stupid can some people be???”
In response to the Daily Beast’s questions about Iran closing off the Strait, a U.S. official argued Iran has committed in writing to re-opening the strait without charge for 60 days, and insisted the U.S. has been clear it would not tolerate tolls or impediments to free transit.
While the U.S. and Iran reached a tentative agreement this week to resume talks, the timing of those discussions remains in flux.
The memorandum of understanding signed by Trump in Versailles, France, earlier this week called for the immediate reopening of the strait as well as a halt to all military operations, including in Lebanon.
After heavy fighting on Friday, Israel and Hezbollah again agreed to another ceasefire after 47 people in Lebanon were killed, the Associated Press reported.
Trump faced mockery for signing the peace deal at a venue that for more than a century has symbolized national defeat. The historic Treaty of Versailles, signed at the palace in 1919, formally ended WWI by imposing a punitive peace on Germany, but historians broadly agree the treaty was a driving force in the rise of Nazism and, later, the outbreak of WWII.
Vice President JD Vance was set to lead the technical talks with Iran, as the agreement provided for 60 days of further discussions, but Vance said it was unclear when he would head overseas, even though the signing of the temporary agreement had been set for Friday in Switzerland.
Late Thursday, a White House spokesperson made clear the timeline had not been finalized and that the vice president would not be traveling for a Friday meeting.
The spokesperson indicated that the U.S. delegation had been “prepared to depart at the first available opportunity” but said, “logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”
The signing of the tentative agreement was also set to begin the removal of the naval blockade against Iran, which would be fully lifted in 30 days.
Before Iran said the strait would remain closed, and talks were put on ice, U.S. Central Command announced on Thursday that U.S. forces had lifted the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports and that all blockade enforcement efforts had ceased.
However, the U.S. military acknowledged that Naval ships would remain in the general area “to make sure that all aspects of the agreement are adhered to, obeyed and in full force and effect.”
The Daily Beast asked CENTCOM about the status of the U.S. blockade in light of the Iranians closing the strait, but it was not immediately clear whether traffic to Iranian ports would be allowed to continue.
