Fifty days into the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, tensions escalated again after clashes in the Gulf prolonged shipping disruptions and cast doubt on a fragile ceasefire set to expire this week.

On Friday, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz fully open to commercial traffic, sending crude prices tumbling more than 10%. By Saturday, hopes for a fully opened artery quickly unraveled as Tehran reimposed closure of the chokepoint, after President Donald Trump refused to end the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

After a brief pickup in transit attempts on Saturday, shipping traffic in the Gulf stalled once again, with vessels coming under fire mid-passage and being forced to withdraw.

On Sunday, the U.S. Navy fired on and seized an Iranian container ship in the Gulf of Oman. Trump called Iran’s actions over the weekend a “total violation” of the truce and renewed threats to strike Iranian power plants and bridges if Tehran refuses a deal.

For markets, it was a reminder of the fragility of the two-week ceasefire, and a deal that could bring a lasting end to the war is still far from done.

U.S. stock futures fell while crude oil prices surged as the U.S. and Iran teetered on the brink of a renewed conflict. West Texas Intermediate futures jumped more than 6% to $89 per barrel shortly after midnight on Monday while and the international benchmark Brent climbed 5.6% to $95.50 a barrel.

“We had the most violent day in the strait on Saturday that we’ve had since the beginning of this crisis, and things don’t seem to be getting any better,” said Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context.

“While we keep getting these sell-offs and it keeps seeming like we’re about to finally get that, the football — Lucy pulls it away — and we’re back to where we started,” Johnston told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.

“The strait still isn’t flowing, and 13 million barrels a day of production remains shut-in. We’re losing it every single day this goes on,” said Johnston, who is also a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Much will hinge on whether the U.S. and Iran will meet for a second round of peace negotiations in Pakistan later this week, as the ceasefire is set to expire on Tuesday.

Trump said that the American and Iranian negotiators would resume talks in Islamabad on Monday. Iran, however, has denied that it would participate in the meeting, citing what it called Washington’s “excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance” and the ongoing blockade as a breach of the ceasefire.

The first round of talks on Apr.12 between Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Foreign Minister…

The U.S. struck and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, President Donald Trump said Sunday.

In a post to Truth Social, the president said the U.S. intercepted a ship called the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman and gave it a warning to stop. The vessel was fired upon when it did not stop. The U.S. has been operating a naval blockade of ships entering and exiting Iranian ports since last week.

“The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom,” Trump said in the post. “Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity.”

The seizure is an apparent escalation of the blockade, and comes after Iran fired upon commercial vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz earlier on Sunday.

U.S. envoys led by Vice President JD Vance were expected to travel to Pakistan on Monday for a second round of peace talks with their Iranian counterparts, a White House official told CNBC. Iran later rebuffed those talks, according to a state media report.

Trump warned on Sunday that if Iran did not agree to the U.S.’s terms to end the conflict, he would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.”

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The U.S. said Wednesday that in its attempt to blockade sanctioned oil exports from Venezuela, it seized two tanker ships, one of which was newly registered under the Russian flag.

In a post on X, the U.S. European Command said the tanker — which it called Bella 1, the ship’s former name — had been seized in the North Atlantic for violations of U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan oil.

The ship, now named Marinera, is just one that Russia has reflagged to join its “dark” fleet.

“This has moved beyond a sanctions case into a real-time jurisdictional challenge, where the key question is what legal basis exists for enforcement on the high seas,” Dimitris Ampatzidis, senior risk and compliance analyst at energy consulting firm Kpler, told CNBC. “The vessel’s identity and history remain constant, but its flag status can significantly raise the diplomatic stakes.”

According to maritime lawyers who spoke with CNBC, a vessel is essentially considered a floating island of the country whose flag it bears.

Automatic Identification System tracking data by Kpler shows the path of the vessel and the diversion the vessel made.

Kpler’s AIS data — real-time location information transmitted by ships — shows that the tanker recently made a sharp turn in the Atlantic Ocean near Scotland.

More than two weeks before the ship was seized, the U.S. stopped and attempted to board the tanker, which was registered as the Bella 1 under a fraudulent Guyana flag, during the ship’s transit to Venezuela to be filled with the sanctioned crude.

On Dec. 31, Russia notified the U.S. that the ship had changed its name to Marinera and switched its registration to Russia, according to Lloyd’s List. The vessel left the Caribbean.

Another newly Russian-flagged tanker linked to moving Venezuelan oil, the Premier, which was reflagged from Gambia to Russia on Dec. 22, remains empty outside the Jose terminal in Venezuela, according to Lloyd’s List vessel tracking.

In a separate X post Wednesday, U.S. Southcom announced that the Panama-flagged tanker Sophia had been seized and was being escorted to the U.S. by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Sophia is laden with around 2 million barrels of crude oil that was loaded at Jose Oil Terminal in Venezuela around Dec. 26-29, as confirmed by satellite imagery and port reports seen by Kpler, Emmanuel Belostrino, senior manager of crude oil market data at Kpler, told CNBC.

The tanker’s previous voyage was also from Venezuela, when it similarly loaded around 2 million barrels of crude in early August 2025 before heading to…

President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. will keep crude oil and tankers seized near Venezuela.

“We’re going to keep it,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida after unveiling a new class of battleships named after himself.

“Maybe we’ll sell it, maybe we’ll keep it, maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserve,” Trump said of the seized oil. “We’re keeping the ships also.”

Trump has ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela as he escalates pressure on President Nicolas Maduro.

The U.S. seized a large tanker on Dec. 10 that was carrying more than 1 million barrels of oil, according energy consulting firm Kpler. It intercepted a second vessel over the weekend. Trump confirmed Monday that the U.S. is pursuing a third tanker.

“It’s moving along. We’ll end up getting it,” Trump said of the tanker. “It came from the wrong location. It came out of Venezuela, and it was sanctioned.”

Trump said “it would be smart” for Maduro to step down when asked whether his ultimate goal is to oust the Venezuelan president.

Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC and has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It is exporting about 749,000 barrels per day this year with more than half that oil going to China, according to data from Kpler.

The U.S. has staged a major military build up in the Caribbean. The Trump administration has launched deadly strikes on boats that it says were trafficking drugs to the U.S. The legality of those strikes is disupted and has been subject to scrutiny by Congress.

Trump threatened Monday to expand the strikes to land.

“We’ll be starting the same program on land,” he said. “If they want to come by land, they’re going to end up having a big problem. They’re going to get blown to pieces, because we don’t want our people poisoned.”

The big crude oil tanker that U.S. forces seized Wednesday off the coast of Venezuela since 2024 has shown a “clear pattern” of spoofing its location to hide where it actually was, according to a leading energy consulting firm.

And data suggests that the Guyana-flagged tanker identified as Skipper since 2022 has carried sanctioned oil from Iran and Venezuela.

The oil industries of both nations are under U.S. sanctions, and Skipper has been under sanction by the Office of Foreign Assets Control since 2022.

Matt Smith, head U.S. analyst at the consulting firm Kpler said Skipper was covertly loaded with 1.1 million barrels of oil in mid-November.

Smith said the ship appeared to be headed for Cuba, though it has been stopped offshore Venezuela since it was loaded.

In the past two years, there have been a total of more than 80 days in which there is evidence of Skipper engaging in so-called AIS spoofing to obscure its location, according to Kpler data.

AIS, or automatic identification system, data, provides real-time information about a ship’s location and includes the vessel’s name, course, speed, classification, call sign and registration number, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s website.

During the time that the Skipper’s real location was hidden on the AIS network, there were multiple ship-to-ship transfers of cargo, according to Kpler data.

The Skipper displayed “a clear pattern of deceptive operations that went far beyond what its AIS transmissions claimed,” said Dimitris Ampatzidis, Kpler’s manager for risk and compliance.

In 2024, three AIS spoofings by the Skipper were recorded in Egypt, Iran, the Mediterranean Sea, Ghana and Nigeria, according to Kpler.

“Falisified positions were broadcast, particularly through extended AIS spoofing episodes,” said Ampatzidis. “The Skipper engaged in activities entirely inconsistent with its declared voyage, including sanctioned loadings in Iran and Venezuela.

“These behaviours form a coherent picture: a vessel intentionally engineered to operate outside transparency, using digital manipulation and covert logistics to mask sanctioned crude flows under the appearance of normal maritime traffic,” Ampatzidis said.

Port call data from 2025 shows that Skipper transported oil out of the ports of Jose in Venezuela and Kharg Island in Iran, according to Kpler data.

In 2024, port calls for Skipper included Banias Port in Syria and Kharg Island in Iran. And in 2023, Skipper visited the Port of Jose in Venezuela.

The Skipper is owned by Marshall Islands-based Triton Navigation Corp., and the beneficial cargo owner, vessel manager and operator is Nigeria-based Thomarose Global Ventures…

After the U.S. military seized a large crude oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, President Donald Trump suggested the ship’s contents could remain in U.S. possession.

“Well, we keep it, I guess,” Trump told reporters Wednesday during a business roundtable at the White House, hours after the Guyana-flagged Skipper was seized.

But similar seizures in the past have led to the sale of confiscated assets. The question now is where the oil from the Venezuelan ship may end up and how the proceeds will be distributed.

Matt Smith, head U.S. analyst at energy consulting firm Kpler, told CNBC that Skipper was covertly loaded with 1.1 million barrels of oil in mid-November and appeared to be headed for Cuba. Though the tanker flew Guyana flags, the country’s Maritime Administration Department said in a statement on Wednesday that the ship was not registered in Guyana.

“In past instances, mainly involving Iran, the oil is sold and the US government kept the proceeds. There’s a civil asset forfeiture process,” said Bob McNally, founder and president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House energy advisor to President George W. Bush.

“We expect that to be followed in this case,” McNally said.

Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, a petroleum analysis firm, told CNBC that the U.S. has seized Iranian oil sold into the U.S. Gulf Coast on multiple occasions in recent years.

“There is a process, ultimately the USA has to indemnify anyone taking part in the transaction, which includes the oil buyer, any tankers required for the lightering operation or any of the service providers involved in the transaction,” Lipow said. Lightering is the process of transferring cargo, oil or hazardous materials from one ship to another.

“They have done it in the past, will do so again,” Lipow said.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Coast Guard and the Pentagon deferred to the White House when asked about the process of disposing of the tanker and oil. The White House, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security Department did not immediately return requests for comment. 

In 2024, the U.S. seized and sold Iranian oil, generating $47 million in proceeds, some of which could be directed toward the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia earlier this year.

The U.S. Marshals Service also operates an asset forfeiture program that includes managing and selling assets seized by the DOJ. But the Marshals Service is not involved in the Venezuelan seizure, according to an agency spokesperson.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a post on X on Wednesday, said that the ship had been sanctioned for multiple years because of its…

U.S. forces on Wednesday seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” Trump said during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

The president provided no detail on who owned the tanker or its destination.

U.S. crude oil was up 70 cents, or 1.2%, to $58.95 per barrel at 3:12 p.m. ET. Global benchmark Brent rose 71 cents, or 1.15%, to $62.65 a barrel.

Trump has escalated pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in recent weeks. The president said Maduro’s “days are numbered” in an interview with Politico published Tuesday. He would not rule out a ground invasion of the South American nation.

“I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump told Politico.

The White House has undertaken a large military buildup in the Caribbean and launched controversial, deadly strikes against boats that it claims were trafficking drugs to the U.S.

Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC and has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It is exporting about 749,000 barrels per day this year with at least half that oil going to China, according to data from energy consulting firm Kpler.

Venezuela exports about 132,000 bpd to the U.S., according to Kpler.

“Shippers will likely be much more cautious and hesitant about loading Venezuelan crude going forward,” said Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler.