On February 17, 2026, Iran temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz for live-fire drills, according to the supplied Euronews report. The drill began early Monday morning and covered the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, all of them critical shipping routes. The closure lasted for several hours and marked the second such exercise in recent weeks, but the first time the maritime corridor had been shut since Washington threatened Tehran with military action.
The report says the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the exercise as tensions with the United States rose. Tehran stepped up its warnings to the US over its military presence in the region and said it would respond to any attack. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted by Iranian state media warning that a warship was dangerous, but that a weapon capable of sinking it was more dangerous still. The message was meant to show that the drill was both a military rehearsal and a political warning.
The closure also came against the backdrop of renewed nuclear diplomacy. Washington and Tehran concluded a second round of talks in Geneva on the same day, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meeting the head of the UN nuclear watchdog there as well. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he thought Iran wanted a deal, while also saying he planned to be involved in the talks, at least indirectly. The report places those remarks alongside the military drill rather than treating them as separate threads.
The source adds that the US had recently deployed the USS Gerald R Ford to the Middle East to join another carrier already in the region. That deployment, together with the closure of the strait, underscores how the nuclear talks were taking place under heavy military pressure. The report also notes that the protests and crackdown inside Iran had added to the tense atmosphere, with arrests and deaths reported by human rights groups and insiders.
What the supplied evidence shows is a familiar pattern in Gulf crises: military signaling, diplomatic contact and warnings from both sides happening at once. Iran used a temporary shutdown of the world's most strategically sensitive waterways to show it could impose costs. The United States responded with military reinforcement and diplomatic pressure. Geneva was where the two tracks met, even as neither side gave any sign that the confrontation had eased.
