US-Iran war live updates: Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’, Iran says; Stock market’s record-setting rally continues

Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.

Here’s what you might have missed overnight.

• Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened, at least for the duration of its current ceasefire with the US and Israel.
• US President Donald Trump confirmed the commercial re-opening, but says the US naval blockade of Iranian ports will continue until a peace deal is agreed.
• In response to the re-opening, oil prices fell more than 10 per cent on Friday (New York time), and share markets rallied.
• Speaking after a gathering of some 50 countries, including Australia, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the strait must be reopened permanently, and they would keep planning a mission to restore maritime security.
• On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited the Viva Energy plant in Geelong, a day after a fire erupted at the refinery, where he batted away several questions probing Trump’s latest criticism of his government.

As the Strait of Hormuz reopens, the first cruise ship has just moved through it.

The Celestyal Discovery, a 680-cabin cruise ship flagged with Malta, left Dubai on Friday after being there for 47 days, according to vessel tracker Marine Traffic Watch.

It’s headed to Oman, with one catch: there are no guests on board.

The cruise operator’s website says the ship has been operating three- and four-night “Iconic Arabia” cruises through the gulf.

Residents of Lebanon’s south have spent the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon returning to their homes, with many driving back carrying flags, banners and photos of those who died.

Here’s how photographers captured the day:

A few hours ago, France’s Emmanuel Macron and the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer issued a joint statement about their meeting with 51 countries regarding the situation in the Middle East.

In a joint statement, the pair said the countries in the meeting “expressed our strong support for a comprehensive diplomatic settlement to the conflict through negotiations”.

“Diplomacy must prevail,” they wrote.

Below is their summary of the meeting:

Almost 200 petrol stations across NSW have been fined by Fair Trading over pricing issues related to their sale of fuel.

The government agency has sent inspectors to thousands of petrol stations around the state since early March, and over the past fortnight revisited 628 stations that had demonstrated “red flag or abnormal behaviour”, Fair Trading Minister Anoulack Chanthivong said early this morning.

Four fines were issued to a service station in Penrith after inspectors noticed discrepancies between the advertised price and that which appeared on FuelCheck, the state government’s petrol pricing app.

Under NSW law, petrol station operators must provide FuelCheck with up-to-date prices.

“My message to service stations remains clear: do the wrong thing and you will be caught,” Chanthivong said.

The United States’ top commander in the Middle East confirmed that its military will work to clear mines from the Strait of Hormuz but would offer no details on the scope of the task.

“It’s a mission that we’ve undertaken,” Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters on a call on Friday (Washington time) before adding that he wouldn’t want to “characterise” the extent to which the critical waterway had been mined by Iran as part of a weeks-long conflict with the US and Israel.

Cooper said that it was “well within our ability to remove mines”.

Earlier on Friday, Trump said in a social media post that “Iran, with the help of the USA, has removed, or is removing, all sea mines!”

A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been in force for close to 24 hours and appears to be holding, after more than a month of war between Israel and Hezbollah – although the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group is not a party to the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “not yet finished” with Hezbollah. The militant group said its response will depend on how events unfold.

The fragile calm has prompted thousands of displaced Lebanese families to head home, with vehicles piled high with mattresses and salvaged belongings backed up for kilometres on a route leading to southern Lebanon. The war displaced over a million people in the tiny country.

The fighting has killed at least 3000 people in Iran, more than 2100 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Thirteen U.S. service members have also been killed.

AP

US President Donald Trump says the US will work with Iran to recover its enriched uranium and bring it back to the United States.

“We’re going to get it together. We’re going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery... We’ll bring it back to the United States,” Trump said during a phone interview with Reuters.

He referred to “nuclear dust” and added that it would be retrieved “very soon”, in reference to what he believes remains after the United States and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear installations in June last year.

But Iran denied agreeing to transfer its enriched uranium to the United States.

The leaders of France and the UK have welcomed the announcement by Iran and the US that the Strait of Hormuz is open, but said freedom of navigation must be permanently restored to the key oil route choked by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said they would keep planning an international mission to restore maritime security, which Starmer said would be deployed “as soon as conditions allow.” They said military planners will meet in London next week.

At a meeting on Friday, more than a dozen countries declared they are willing to join an international mission to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz when conditions permit, Britain said.

Some 50 countries, including Australia, joined a video conference chaired by France and Britain that followed on initial military planning and aimed to send a signal to Washington.

At least eight oil tankers raced toward the Strait of Hormuz in the hours after Iran’s foreign minister said the vital waterway was fully open to shipping.

Five of the carriers, which had been anchored north of Dubai, were moving into the waterway on Friday afternoon, soon after Iran’s foreign minister said it was completely open, vessel tracking data shows. Three more, which were waiting about 110km west, have also begun moving in the direction of the strait.

A Malta-flagged passenger vessel, reportedly sailing without passengers and bound for Oman, has departed Dubai after remaining docked for 47 days, according to vessel-tracker MarineTraffic.

It said the Celestial Discovery ship is expected to arrive in Oman on Saturday.

If the ships continue their voyages, their movements would be among the clearest signs yet that Hormuz might finally be opening up to shipping that isn’t connected to Iran since the war began on February 28.

Bloomberg, AP

The benchmark S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq traded at record highs on Friday, while the blue-chip Dow hit its highest level in over two months, as investors cheered Iran’s decision to open the Strait of Hormuz and were optimistic it could reach an agreement with the United States.

With traders increasingly confident that an end to the war is near, US crude oil prices tumbled more than 11 per cent, alleviating inflation concerns. The Strait of Hormuz is a vital waterway for global energy transportation.

“The concern about oil putting the world into a slowdown diminishes as it’s onward and upward for a possible final deal,” said Bob Doll, CEO of Crossmark, who noted that while there is still no signed US-Iran deal, “it looks like it’s heading in a direction that’s enough for the market to go up”.

Reuters