US holds fire on Iran after 2 days of strikes; Khamenei buried after funeral procession
Following two days of retaliatory strikes, President Donald Trump paused the US-Iran conflict as former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is buried. Meanwhile, Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz have halted ceasefire hopes, sending Brent crude oil and local gas prices higher.
Strait of Hormuz security threat level remains 'SEVERE,' maritime watchdog says
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Organization (UKMTO) warned that the threat level in the Strait of Hormuz remains "SEVERE" in a Friday update.
"Notwithstanding recent unprovoked attacks on merchant vessels, mariners are reminded that the southern route of the SoH has been expanded and remains available for all traffic," the organization warned in a Friday advisory.
The advisory counseled mariners to maintain contact with NATO's Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS) and to watch out for mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Twenty-two vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday amidst renewed U.S. and Iranian strikes, Fox News' Lauren Simonetti reported. Two of the 22 were oil tankers.
The 22 vessels that crossed Thursday surpassed the daily average that crossed the key oil shipping route at the Iran war's height in April and May, but it's far less than the daily average of 50 vessels that transited in June after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a partial ceasefire on June 14.
Before the war's February kickoff, an average of more than 120 vessels crossed the Strait daily, according to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Strait of Hormuz 'has been expanded and remains available for all traffic,' says NAVCENT
U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) issued a reminder that the U.S. has opened a transit corridor in the Strait of Hormuz that "remains available for all traffic."
"No nation has the authority to close or control the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces are fully prepared to deter threats, defend freedom of navigation, and respond decisively to any attempt to disrupt lawful transit through the Strait," NAVCENT announced Friday through a United Kingdom Maritime Trade Organization advisory note.
The U.S.-maintained southern corridor route shifts traffic away from the center of the strait, instead directing shipping through a funnel near the coast of Oman.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is also maintaining its own northern route which the country has urged international shipping to use, though has tried to extract tolls from various nations for its use.
The United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) is also maintaining a central lane called the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS).
Of the 22 tracked vessels that transited the strait on Thursday, nine took Iran's path, six took the TSS, one took the U.S.-maintained Southern Corridor, while six took an unknown path, according to Fox News reporting.
Fox News' Lauren Simonetti contributed to this post.
Trump calls terrorist Iranian a ‘cancer.’ Is he finally the one to remove it?
President Donald Trump’s remarks on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, may represent one of the most consequential shifts in America’s strategic language toward the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 1979 revolution.
By warning that any new Iranian attack would trigger a far more devastating response — and by describing the regime as a "cancer" that must be removed — Trump signaled something that goes beyond conventional political rhetoric. In the language of national security, such terminology often reflects a fundamental change in how a threat is defined.
For more than four decades, U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic has centered on containment and deterrence. The underlying assumption was that Tehran’s behavior could be influenced, constrained or made more costly. Trump’s remarks suggest a different premise: the issue is no longer merely the regime’s behavior, but the system itself. The objective is no longer to manage the crisis, but to eliminate its source — raising once again the prospect of regime change as a strategic outcome.
This is an excerpt from a story by Erfan Fard.
Global oil supply and demand were on track for recovery, International Energy Agency reports
Global oil supply and demand rebounded in June and were on track for further recovery in July before the latest round of U.S. strikes on Iranian targets, according to a Friday report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Global oil supply rebounded sharply, adding 4.1 million barrels per day (mb/d) in June to increase to 98.8 mb/d for the month "as a resumption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz underpinned a partial recovery in Gulf production," the report noted.
Production was still 9.4 mb/d below pre-war levels, however, and yearly output was on track to decline by an average of 3.7 mb/d for 2026 compared to 2025.
Still, global oil inventories rose in June for the first time since February, adding 21 million barrels, led by a 41 million barrel increase to China's supply.
Further recovery, the report noted, was contingent "on a swift de-escalation of renewed hostilities," a prospect imperiled by a recent two-day U.S. bombing campaign in Iran that served as retaliation for Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz
Khamenei officially buried at Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad
Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was finally laid to rest early Friday at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Iran, according to a statement posted by his official office.
“In the early hours of Friday, July 10, 2026, the pure body of the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei … was laid to rest in the luminous shrine of Imam Reza,” Khamenei’s official X account said.
The burial concludes several days of funeral ceremonies that took Khamenei’s body through Iraq and Iran following his death during the conflict with Israel and the United States.
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