The UK and France will host a multinational meeting of defence ministers involving 40 countries tomorrow to discuss military plans to restore trade flows through the strait of Hormuz, the British defence ministry said.

The UK’s defence secretary John Healey and his French counterpart Catherine Vautrin will co-chair the meeting. Healey said:

When I co-chair this meeting of nations from around the world, our job will be to make sure we are not just talking, we are ready to act.

That is why I have directed HMS Dragon to the Middle East, so Britain is in position to support this mission the moment it is needed.

This government will not stand by when instability drives up costs for British families and businesses.

The UK has already announced the deployment of HMS Dragon to the region so the destroyer can play a role in a multinational mission should the conditions allow after the US-Israel war on Iran is over.

Iran on Sunday threatened to strike British and French warships in the strait if they try to help reopen the strategic waterway.

French President Emmanuel Macron subsequently clarified that France had “never envisaged” a naval deployment but rather a security mission that would be done in coordination with Tehran.

South Korea has condemned an attack against a cargo ship operated by a Korean shipper on 4 May in the strait of Hormuz and said it plans to respond once the source of the attack is identified.

Namu, the vessel operated by the shipper HMM Co., was not in violation of any rules in effect at the time in the waters off the UAE and it was a case of an attack against a commercial vessel that cannot be justified, the official said.

“We condemn this in the strongest terms,” Wi Sung-lac, the South Korean presidential national security adviser, told reporters.

“We’ll seek through further investigation to identify the party responsible for the attack, the exact type of projectile and its physical size.”

South Korea’s defence minister Ahn Gyu-back is due in Washington for talks with the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday.

They could possibly discuss cooperation to restore freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz with its effective closure raising concerns about a looming energy crisis in South Korea’s trade-dependent economy. Washington has urged its allies to help unblock the strait but has so far been met with a wall of resistance.

In response to US-Israeli attacks, Iran has effectively closed the strait to most traffic, inflicting severe economic damage around the world as the waterway usually carries about 20% of global oil shipments and significant amounts of gas and products including fertiliser.

Al Jazeera is carrying some comments from the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei, who is speaking about the Iranian proposal ⁠to ⁠end the war that the US has emphatically rejected.

“Demanding an end to the war, lifting the (US) blockade and piracy, and ⁠releasing Iranian assets that have ⁠been unjustly frozen in banks due to US pressure,” Baghaei was quoted as having ⁠said.

“Safe passage through the strait ⁠of Hormuz ⁠and establishing security in the region and Lebanon were other demands ‌of Iran, which are considered a generous and responsible ‌offer ‌for regional security,” he added.

“Whenever we are forced to fight, we will fight, and whenever there is room for diplomacy, we will seize that opportunity,” Baghaei was also quoted as having told a news briefing earlier.

He said the US’s demands were “unreasonable” and suggested that stability in the region had been undermined by Trump’s rejection of Iran’s response to Washington’s peace proposal.

The US parameters for nuclear talks reportedly included a moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment for up to 20 years; the transfer overseas, possibly to the US, of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear warheads; and the dismantling of Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian counter-proposal suggested a shorter moratorium, the export of part of the HEU stockpile and the dilution of the rest, and refusal to accept the dismantling of facilities.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had earlier warned the war would continue as long as Iran had a stockpile of HEU.

“It’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material – enriched uranium – that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” he told the CBS programme 60 Minutes, according an excerpt published before its broadcast.

Asked how the HEU should be removed, Netanyahu said: “You go in and you take it out,” adding that the best way would be to enter Iran to secure the fissile material as part of an agreement. He said Donald Trump had told him he wants “to go in there”.

In a separate interview, Trump appeared to take a more relaxed view of the HEU stockpile, which the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says is buried deep under mountains in central Iran. The US president suggested that for the time being, satellite surveillance was sufficient to guarantee no one had access to it.

We are restarting our live coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran after Donald Trump described Tehran’s response to Washington’s peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”, raising the possibility of fresh conflict.

Iran warned it would not hold back from retaliating against any new US strikes or permit more foreign warships in the strait of Hormuz.

A ceasefire meant to facilitate peace talks came into effect in Apri. It has been largely observed, despite exchanges of fire and reports of strikes in the strategic strait of Hormuz, which Iran has continued to effectively block in response to being attacked by the US and Israel in February.

The US military in turn has blockaded Iranian ports since 13 April, claiming it has turned back 61 commercial vessels and disabled four.

According to Iranian state media, Tehran’s proposal included demands that the US lift its sanctions, end its naval blockade and called for an immediate end to the war with guarantees against any renewed attack on the country.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump said: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘representatives’. I don’t like it – totally unacceptable.”

The US had presented a peace proposal a week ago, which, as my colleague Julian Borger notes here, was reported to consist of a one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding that would reopen the strait while setting a framework for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Trump told US outlet Axios he’d discussed the Iranian response in a phone call with his close ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It was a very nice call. We have a good relationship,” he said, before stressing that the Iran negotiations are “my situation, not everybody else’s.”

Netanyahu warned the war would continue as long as Iran had a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear warheads.