Fifty-five merchant ships were moving through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday — and Iran said every one of them was in danger. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced, via state television, that the strait was closed once again, citing Israeli strikes in Lebanon as a violation of the fragile US-Iran agreement signed earlier this week. The closure order came on the same day that a senior Iranian delegation landed in Switzerland to begin a new round of direct talks with US Vice-President JD Vance, making the announcement one of the week's sharpest contradictions. The US military pushed back immediately and with specific numbers.

It stated that 55 merchant vessels had transited the strait on Saturday, moving what it described as large volumes of cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets. The Pentagon did not confirm at what point during the day those ships had passed through, which left the sequence of events — and the real state of access to the waterway — genuinely unclear. What was clear is that two powers who had just signed a landmark deal were already telling the world two different versions of reality. The agreement they signed earlier this week is a 14-point document.

It opened a 60-day window for negotiations on a far wider set of issues, most critically Iran's nuclear programme.