Tehran ‘attacks US ships with drones’

On Good Friday, an F-15E Strike Eagle with two crew members was shot down by Iranian forces in a dramatic escalation of the war.

It was believed to be the first US plane brought down by enemy fire during the conflict, as images of the wreckage circulated widely on social media.

Donald Trump was furious.

The US President ‘screamed at aides for hours’, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, as images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis loomed heavy in his mind.

He demanded that the military retrieve the pilots immediately, but US troops hadn’t been on the ground in Iran since the government overthrow that led to the hostage crisis, and any operation would be intensely risky.

Aides kept Trump out of the room as they received minute-by-minute updates about the mission, believing the president’s impatience wouldn’t be helpful.

Instead, they updated him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official told the outlet.

While one pilot was rescued seven hours later, the other remained missing until late Saturday evening, when he was finally saved in a high-stakes extraction.

It wasn’t until after 2am that Trump went to bed.

Six hours later, however, he was back on Truth Social and published one of his most aggressive posts yet, designed to push the regime into reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!’ he wrote on Easter morning from the White House residence.

‘Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.’

Aides were subsequently flooded with calls from Republican senators and Christian leaders, asking why Trump would add the Islamic prayer and use the F-word so publicly.

When one adviser later questioned the president about it, he said he came up with the ‘Allah idea’ himself, according to the outlet.

Trump said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could pressure the Iranians to the negotiating table.

It was a language, he said, that Iranians would understand. But he was also worried about the potential fallout, asking advisers: ‘How’s it playing?’

Peace talks between Washington and Tehran are scheduled to take place in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, later today.

Delegations are expected to gather at the city’s Serena Hotel – where previous discussions on April 11 failed to achieve a resolution to end the war.

Guests have been told to leave the hotel and police have announced the closure of key surrounding roads.

Donald Trump announced that his ‘representatives’ would arrive in Islamabad this evening, with Vice-President JD Vance leading the US delegation alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The Islamic Republic is yet to formally confirm whether it will attend discussions.

According to the country’s state media, the regime will not participate in the talks while the US blockade of Iranian ports remains in place.

The fragile two-week ceasefire is due to expire on Wednesday, and the US President has repeated his threats of destroying Iranian infrastructure if a deal isn’t signed.

A view of Serena hotel that hosted last round of peace talks between the USA and Iran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 20

Security personnel stand guard at a security checkpost along a road temporarily closed near the Serena Hotel at the Red Zone area in Islamabad on April 20

Oil prices surged on Monday morning as a standoff between Iran and the US prevented tankers from using the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway.

Brent crude futures were up by 4.74 per cent at $94.66 (£70.11) a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was 5.6 per cent higher at $88.55.

On Friday, oil prices had dropped back to where they were in the early days of the Iran war, and US stocks raced to a fresh record after Tehran said the strait was open again for commercial tankers carrying crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

But on Friday, the Islamic Republic closed the strait again after the US said it would not end its blockade of Iranian ports.

Tehran said the restrictions would remain if Washington did not ‘ensure full freedom of navigation for vessels travelling from Iran to destinations and from destinations to Iran’.

Tensions escalated again on Sunday when Donald Trump announced that the US had intercepted and seized an Iran-flagged cargo ship, the M/V Touska.

Officials claim the ship had attempted to push through the American blockade despite repeated warnings.

A fragile, two-week ceasefire is set to expire Wednesday, while deepening tensions in the Strait of Hormuz raises questions over new talks to end the war.

CENTCOM has published new images of the US navy seizing an Iranian-flagged container ship in the Gulf of Oman on Sunday.

Troops aboard the USS Spruance intercepted the M/V Touska in the Arabian Sea as it sailed toward Bandar Abbas.

The operation is the first known time that the US fired on a commercial vessel during the conflict.

US President Donald Trump said American troops fired on and took ‘full custody’ of the vessel in the Gulf of Oman after it refused ‘fair warning to stop’.

The US navy had warned that it would board and seize any tankers attempting to evade its maritime siege, which began on April 13, of vessels going to or from Iranian ports.

Tehran has attacked US military ships in the Gulf of Oman with drones, according to the Iranian semi-official news agency Tasnim.

There has been no reports of damages from the apparent drone attacks.

It came after the US military launched a daring raid on an Iranian tanker that tried to breach the American naval blockade on Sunday.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters – the nation’s highest operational command unit coordinating the armed forces – described Washington’s naval operation as a violation of the ceasefire and said it would ‘retaliate for this act of armed piracy by the US Navy’.

‘Iranian forces launched drone strikes on US military vessels in the Gulf of Oman after American terrorists attacked an Iranian container ship, the Toska, en route from China to Iran,’ Tasnim wrote in a post on X.