Iran issued dramatic new demands for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen as the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile. Yemen’s military attacked the country's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. And Turkey’s Kurdish peace bill won approval in parliament.
Here’s a look at developments across the Middle East on Saturday. Full coverage can be found here.
Iran's politburo-like body known as the Supreme National Security Council
said the Strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behavior," issuing new demands that could shake up talks on a deal to manage the waterway and traffic on it.
Iran's state broadcaster published the statement by the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
The U.S. must never threaten Iran again, the statement said, and must permanently end the war with Iran and its armed allies in the region. The U.S. must lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area. It also must “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.
There was no immediate response from the U.S., which has wanted an acceptable deal first on the strait before ending the blockade.
Iran earlier said it was close to reaching a deal with Oman to manage the strait, which runs between the two countries.
Oman, a mediator Gulf Arab country which has said relatively little on the talks, said in a statement Saturday that the discussions were ongoing “in a positive and constructive atmosphere,” and condemned attacks on ships on the strait.
A vessel owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned ADNOC oil and gas company was attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, Emirati authorities said earlier Saturday. The Foreign Ministry said Iran fired the missile as part of attacks on commercial shipping.
ADNOC said in a statement that there were no casualties following the attack early Saturday. The company said over a dozen of its vessels have been attacked by missiles and drones while passing through the strait since the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran in February. One crew member has been killed and 20 others wounded, it said.
ADNOC didn’t elaborate on where the attack took place nor on any damage.
Later, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said a vessel east of the town of Khasab, Oman, had been struck by a projectile that caused a fire that was put out, with the vessel and crew safe. It was not immediately clear whether this was the ADNOC incident.
Iran and Oman, on the other side of the strait, have been discussing a deal to manage the waterway, which had been considered an international one before the war.
The attacks were in response to the Houthis’ recent strikes in central and eastern Yemen. Col. Majed al-Nazili, spokesperson for Yemen’s military, said the attacks targeted the rebels’ “sites and capabilities” on multiple front lines, without elaborating.
The escalation between the Houthis and Yemen's internationally recognized government and its backer, a Saudi-supported coalition, threatens to reignite Yemen’s civil war following a 2022 truce.
On Friday, United Nations envoy Hans Grundberg urged the parties to exercise restraint, saying that “Yemen today faces a greater risk of renewed large-scale conflict than at any point since the U.N.-brokered truce of April 2022."
A Turkish draft law aimed at advancing a peace effort with the country's Kurdish insurgents passed its first hurdle in parliament on Saturday, with a committee approving the measure that includes a conditional, pardon-like mechanism for thousands of former fighters.
Last year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, declared its decision to disarm and disband as part of the peace initiative aimed at ending the decades-long conflict with the Turkish state.
The draft legislation, expected to be approved in the general assembly next week, defines the procedures for the group’s disarmament and the rehabilitation of some PKK members. It would suspend some prison sentences for people convicted of membership and postpone the prosecution of others.
The measures would come into effect once Turkey’s National Security Council confirms that the group has disbanded and surrendered all weapons.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since it began in the 1980s and has spilled into neighboring Iraq and Syria. Turkey and its Western allies consider the group a terrorist organization.
