Day 45: Trump blockades Iran on a tweet

US Central Command enforced the Hormuz blockade from 14:00 GMT on 13 April, but quietly narrowed Trump's order. The presidential post called for stopping all ships in the strait; the military restricted enforcement to vessels at Iranian ports only.

Shipping companies now face 2 competing legal frameworks from the same command. IRGC mine corridors already restrict available channels, so the combined effect amounts to a de facto strait closure regardless of the label on the military order. Read full version ↓

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed on 13 April that US and Israeli strikes destroyed Natanz, damaged Esfahan, and struck Fordow, leaving Iran unable to enrich uranium at any site. The last verified stockpile stood at 440.9 kg of near-weapons-grade material, recorded in September 2025.

Both sides at Islamabad argued over enrichment rights for a capability Iran cannot currently exercise. The real dispute is whether Iran may resume enrichment once it rebuilds, a political question the strikes did not resolve. Read full version ↓

The UK, Germany, and Australia refused the US Hormuz blockade. Only UAE and Bahrain joined. A NATO official disclosed the UK is leading a 40-nation coalition, including France, Japan, and Canada, to reopen the strait through minesweeping.

2 opposing Western strategies run over the same waterway: the US blockading Iranian ports, the UK leading a multilateral reopening. France and Japan paid Iran's toll in April, making their ships potential US interdiction targets while both sit inside the UK coalition. Read full version ↓

Trump ordered the US Navy to intercept any vessel that had paid Iran's Hormuz toll, a provision absent from the military's own operational order. France's CMA CGM Kribi and Japan's Mitsui OSK both paid the fee in yuan in early April, making allied ships targets under the presidential instruction.

US Central Command quietly dropped the provision from enforcement. Paris and Tokyo now hold a grievance against Washington with no public clarification of which version of the order is operative. Read full version ↓

Brent Crude jumped 8% to above $103 on 13 April when Trump announced the Hormuz blockade, reversing a post-Ceasefire low of $92.21. About 325 tankers remain stranded in the Gulf, including a dozen Iranian supertankers carrying an estimated $2.4 billion of crude.

Goldman Sachs had cut its Q2 Brent forecast to $90 after the Ceasefire. The blockade made that obsolete within a day, putting the bank's $120 Q3 severe scenario into play as the operative forecast. Read full version ↓

Iran state television broadcast an AI-generated video on 13 April showing Mojtaba Khamenei entering a war room and surveying a map of Israel's Dimona nuclear facility. No audio accompanied the footage.

If authentic footage existed, Tehran would use it. The Soufan Center assessed on 9 April that Khamenei is unconscious after strikes on 28 February. With no functional Supreme Leader, Iran's 31 semi-autonomous IRGC commands can interpret Ceasefire terms independently or escalate without central authorisation. Read full version ↓

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported March US CPI rose 0.9% month-on-month, the largest monthly increase since 1967. Gasoline climbed 21.2%; the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index hit an all-time low of 47.6.

All 3 figures predate the blockade declared on 13 April. April CPI will be worse. Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz cut fuel tax by 17 euro cents per litre for 2 months, the first European fiscal response tied directly to the war's fuel shock. Read full version ↓

The House rejected the War Powers Resolution on Iran 219-212 on 12 April. Senate Democrats, led by Mark Warner, announced a Senate vote this week as the 60-day WPR clock approaches its approximate 29 April expiry.

A Senate passage still faces a Trump veto; override needs a two-thirds majority the Democrats do not hold. The WPR clock, the Ceasefire window, and the GL-U lapse all converge in the same 10-day window with no executive instrument behind any of them. Read full version ↓

Saudi Arabia restored the East-West Petroline to full capacity of 7 million Barrels Per Day on 12 April, routing crude from the Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea and bypassing Hormuz entirely.

At $103 Brent, Saudi Arabia earns roughly $721 million per day regardless of blockade status. Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar cannot bypass the strait; they earn nothing until it reopens. That divergence reduces Riyadh's urgency to mediate and hands it unilateral pricing power inside OPEC+. Read full version ↓

Hezbollah rockets wounded 2 IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon on 13 April. Five IDF divisions remain deployed in Lebanon; Israel-Lebanon talks are scheduled in Washington next week, with Israel rejecting Ceasefire as a precondition.

Lebanon's status under the Ceasefire remains unresolved since Day 1: Iran's text included Lebanon, Israel's excluded it, and the ambiguity has never been settled . Daily Hezbollah fire and 5 IDF divisions maintain active escalation risk independent of Hormuz. Read full version ↓

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, condemned Trump's war rhetoric as "truly unacceptable" and warned of a "delusion of omnipotence" on 13 April. Trump called him "terrible for foreign policy" and falsely claimed the Pope backed a nuclear-armed Iran.

The Pope's statement contained no reference to Iran's nuclear programme. Trump invented the claim. US presidents have historically been careful with the Catholic Church; attacking the first American pope with a demonstrable falsehood has no modern precedent. Read full version ↓

Windward documented a scrapped LNG carrier's registry reused by an active tanker transiting Hormuz, with 14 State Department-sanctioned shadow fleet vessels tracked in the strait as of 12 April.

Blockade conditions make identity spoofing more attractive: legitimate passages are closed, so adding fraud to an already-sanctioned voyage costs nothing extra. The 14 verified vessels are the visible layer; the true total is higher because the technique is designed to defeat remote monitoring. Read full version ↓

Hengaw's 10th report documented 125,630 civilian structures damaged across Iran in 40 days of conflict: 100,000 residential and 24,000 commercial. Iran Red Crescent reported 960 people rescued from Tehran rubble during the same period.

Reconstruction financing is effectively impossible: the US blockade has frozen oil export revenue, and OFAC sanctions block foreign currency borrowing. Even under a durable Ceasefire, Iran lacks the hard currency to fund rebuilding on this scale. Read full version ↓