The United Arab Emirates said a ship affiliated with its national oil company came under an Iranian missile attack early Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz, further muddying the outlook for a deal to open the strategic waterway.
The U.A.E. blamed the attack on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary group tasked with protecting the regime and maintaining Tehran's grip on the strait.
The attack comes as Iran's top leaders weigh a draft agreement with Oman to set up new shipping lanes through the strait and gradually open it to traffic in exchange for concessions from the U.S. Iran is seeking sanctions waivers to sell its oil and an end to the U.S. blockade.
President Trump called off a wave of U.S. attacks last weekend citing progress in talks and has said a deal to reopen the strait was close. But mediators say it has stalled in recent days amid Iranian demands for financial relief and a U.S. insistence that shipping traffic not be impeded.
The Revolutionary Guard early in the war choked off traffic through the strait -- the thoroughfare for a fifth of the world's oil -- and has kept it constrained with regular attacks on ships.
"For us, the Strait of Hormuz is not merely an economic waterway, but rather a key component of our geopolitical and strategic power," the Revolutionary Guard's spokesman said on state media Saturday.
The spokesman and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the agreement with Oman wouldn't reopen the strait without concessions from the U.S.
Iran is vowing to bar U.S. Navy warships from passing through the strait as part of any agreement to reopen the waterway, pressing its goal of curtailing America's decades-old military presence in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. officials have told mediators they won't accept Iranian restrictions or tolls on Hormuz traffic
The U.A.E.'s Adnoc oil company said Friday that three of its ships already had been hit by missiles or drones this week. A total of 15 have been struck since the beginning of the war, it said. That didn't include Saturday's attack.
The condition of the ship wasn't immediately clear, but Adnoc said the incident resulted in no injuries and the situation has been brought under control.
The memorandum of understanding Trump signed with Iran in June also sought to open the strait and clear the way for deeper talks and an eventual end to the war. But it fell apart amid Iranian attacks on ships aimed at asserting Tehran's control over the waterway.
The new agreement would formalize an Iranian role overseeing traffic coming into the strait -- a concern for the energy-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, like the U.A.E., which rely on the waterway as a conduit for their exports of oil and gas.
The U.A.E. has managed to steer much of its oil around the blockage in Hormuz by piping it across the desert to its eastern coast on the Gulf of Oman.
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