“US Israel Iran War”

Like many other residents of Tehran, Sohrab* is used to seeing a new face staring down at him: AI-generated portraits of Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader.

“They’ve made the city ugly,” the 35-year-old restaurant manager said. “Everywhere, there are pictures of [the late ayatollah] Ali Khamenei and his son, Mojtaba. When I see this propaganda, I curse [them].”

In Iran’s capital, the war is portrayed on the city’s walls, flyovers and public squares, where the Islamic regime has plastered propaganda campaigns to project control and glorify resistance.

On Friday afternoon, out of nowhere, Iran’s foreign minister announced that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” to commercial vessels.

Just hours later, however, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reminded Abbas Araghchi and the world who was really in charge. In an apparent rebuke, it said it retained “strict management and control” over the waterway and shot at ships attempting to cross.

Two days later, the foreign minister was still under attack by hardliners in Tehran. Newspapers demanded that Mr Araghchi reverse his decision. State television criticised him for tweeting policy rather than explaining to Iranians. Some officials and moderate outlets defended the opening with conflicting explanations.

One of the most persistent and dangerous misreadings of the confrontation with Iran is the stubborn confusion between a brutal ideological regime and the people it has oppressed for nearly five decades.

This is no accident. Tehran has long understood that its best defense is not its missiles or its proxies, but its control of the narrative. In Western capitals, where moral clarity too often yields to political expediency, this confusion produces a strange paralysis: the fear of “hurting the Iranian people” serves as an excuse to tolerate a regime that has hurt them far more cruelly and systematically than any outside power ever has.

WASHINGTON — The US seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship after “blowing a hole” in its engine room when it tried to break past the Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump revealed Sunday.

The USS Spruance destroyer intercepted Iran’s Touska cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, taking custody of the ship after it refused warnings to stop, according to the president.

NEW – CENTCOM releases footage of the U.S. forces intercepting M/V Touska and says that "since the blockade’s commencement, U.S. forces have directed 25 commercial vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port." pic.twitter.com/KPrGF7mYHb

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 19, 2026

Iran has reportedly rejected participation in a second round of peace talks with the US in Pakistan, citing “Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the ongoing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire”, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Iran’s quick reversal of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz has laid bare a rift between the country’s political leaders and the military hard-liners who have deepened their hold on the government since the war began.

A day after the country’s foreign minister announced that the strait was open, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired on at least two commercial ships in the Gulf for the first time during the cease-fire—and broadcast warnings to mariners that the waterway remained closed, causing ships that were attempting the transit to turn back. Ships would be targeted if they moved, it said.

The public display of division points to the difficulty ahead as President Trump tries to nail down concessions that would allow him to end the war with a clear win.

After telling Fox News that talks with Iran will resume on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump says on Truth Social, “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.”

“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” he writes.

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The U.S. military is preparing in coming days to board Iran-linked oil tankers and seize commercial ships in international waters, according to U.S. officials, expanding its naval crackdown beyond the Middle East.

The planning comes as the Iranian military continues to tighten its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, attacking several commercial vessels on Saturday as it declared the waterway was being “strictly controlled” by Iran. The developments sent shipping companies scrambling a day after Iran’s foreign minister said the strait was fully open to commercial traffic—an announcement that was welcomed by President Trump.

Nine in ten Iranian Canadians “strongly or somewhat support regime change in Iran,” according to a new community survey.

The survey was conducted by the Metropolis Institute (a division of the Association for Canadian Studies) on behalf of the non-profit Advancement of Human Rights Organization for the Middle East (AHROME). Metropolis Institute distributed 1,768 surveys between March 29 and April 13, most of them at large Iranian community gatherings in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, and 1,166 were fully completed.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron — a.k.a., dumb and dumber, or gay and gayer, take your pick — have now agreed to lend their nations’ potent militaries to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

Unfortunately for them, and the dignity of the countries they allegedly lead, the U.S. has already opened the strait.

Even Iran has announced that the strait is now open.

Victor Davis Hanson says European leaders are now trying to take credit for what happened to Iran, calling it “shameless” after they stayed on the sidelines while the real work was done:

I think now that all the heavy lifting has been done and Iran is flat on its back, you’re… pic.twitter.com/yg6Vig9iSq

— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) April 18, 2026

Regular readers will note that most of what was predicted about the Iran War in the last three weeks in this column is coming to pass. The Iranians entered into the Islamabad discussions exuding confidence that the Americans were suing for peace and that Iran had found and struck the Achilles’ heel of the West by closing the Strait of Hormuz. This revealed the infirmity of the Western Alliance and exploited the consumptive flabbiness of the American public itself with the terrifying spectre of somewhat higher gasoline prices.

If there is one thing we have learnt during the past 72 hours, it is how hard it will be to disentangle all the threads that have been drawn together in the Gulf.
It would be a big enough challenge for a seasoned diplomat with years to negotiate. Instead, it falls to a US president notoriously averse to detail and an array of Iranian leaders struggling among themselves for dominance, all underscored by the ticking time bomb of a global economic shock.

NEW: President Trump weighs in on Iran's latest actions in the Strait of Hormuz: "They can't blackmail us." pic.twitter.com/g7MbGtMsOe

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 18, 2026

Every morning, Darya looks forward to visiting her favourite café on the way to work. From her home on Yusufabad Street, an upper-middle class neighbourhood where Tehran’s old villas meet the new apartment blocks, she descends 200 zigzagging tiled steps.

From there, she catches a bus that runs down a dedicated narrow lane on Valiasr — the longest street in the Middle East — connecting the affluent north to working-class Tehran.

Some merchant vessels received a radio message from the Iranian Navy saying the Strait of Hormuz had been shut again, shipping sources have told Reuters.

The Iranian Navy told the tankers that no ships are allowed to pass through the Strait, the sources add.

As we’ve just reported, at least one tanker says it has come under fire in the strait by IRGC gunboats.

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