WASHINGTON/DUBAI/ISLAMABAD, April 23 (Reuters) - Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz as it tightened its grip on the strategic waterway after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was indefinitely calling off attacks, with no sign of peace talks restarting.
The status of a two-week-old ceasefire, due to have expired earlier this week, remained unclear. In a sharp about-face hours after threatening renewed violence, Trump made what appeared to be a unilateral announcement on Tuesday that the U.S. would extend a ceasefire until it had discussed an Iranian proposal in peace talks to end the two-month-old war.
But Iranian officials did not say they had agreed to any extension of the truce, and criticized Trump's decision to maintain the U.S. Navy blockade of Iran's trade by sea, itself considered by Iran an act of war. Iran's parliament speaker and lead negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said a full ceasefire only made sense if the blockade was lifted.
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the slender chokepoint that carried a fifth of the world's oil trade before the war, was impossible with such a "flagrant breach of the ceasefire," Qalibaf said on social media.
"You did not achieve your goals through military aggression and you will not achieve them by bullying either," he wrote in his first response to Trump's announcement. "The only way is recognizing the Iranian people's rights."
Trump again backed away at the last moment from his repeated threats to bomb Iran's power plants and other civilian infrastructure, which the United Nations and others warn would violate international humanitarian law. But little progress has been made in ending the war that started with joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28.
That leaves the two sides in a holding pattern with the crucial Strait of Hormuz still effectively shut, straining economies across the world. Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, where the Iran-allied Hezbollah militant group joined the fighting against Israel.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two vessels and escorted them to Iranian shores, according to statements by the shipping companies and Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency.
The Revolutionary Guards accused the ships it had seized, the Liberia-flagged Epaminondas and Panama-flagged MSC Francesca, of operating without required permits and tampering with their navigation systems.
A third, Liberia-flagged container ship was fired upon in the same area but was not damaged and had resumed sailing, according to maritime security sources.
Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News that since the ships were not U.S. or Israeli vessels the seizure was not a violation of the ceasefire. She called it an act of "piracy".
The U.S. military said on Wednesday it had so far directed more than 30 ships to turn around or return to port as part of the U.S. blockade against Iran. Far beyond the Gulf, the U.S. military has intercepted at least three Iranian-flagged tankers in Asian waters, sources said, redirecting them away from their positions near India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
Brent, the international crude oil benchmark, remained above $100 a barrel in Asian trade on Thursday, having hit triple figures a day earlier for the first time in two weeks.
NO NEW DEADLINE FOR CEASEFIRE
In his Tuesday announcement, Trump said that the U.S. had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators "to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal ... and discussions are concluded, one way or the other."
He has not set any deadline for the proposal or discussions, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together after both failed to show up for tentatively scheduled talks in Islamabad on Tuesday before the two-week-old ceasefire was due to expire.
A first session of peace talks between Iran and the U.S. in Islamabad 11 days ago produced no agreement.
Trump wants Iran to give up highly enriched uranium and forgo further enrichment to prevent it building a nuclear weapon. Iran says it has only a peaceful civilian nuclear programme, and wants the lifting of sanctions, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.
Iran has also made a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group a condition of truce talks. On Wednesday, Israeli air strikes on Lebanon killed at least five people, including the Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil.
It was the deadliest day since a 10-day ceasefire was announced on April 16 between Israel and Lebanon.
Iran executed a man convicted of links to both an exiled opposition group and Israel's intelligence service, Iranian media reported on Thursday.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Stephen Coates; Editing by David Gaffen and Lincoln Feast.)
