New Delhi, June 26 -- DUBAI - Eleven thousand civilian sailors had spent ninety-six hours waiting for a corridor out of the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, the United Nations agency that had spent three days building one suspended the operation after a Singapore-flagged container ship was struck by a projectile, not on the UN-approved route Iran had tolerated, but on the competing American-backed channel that Tehran had explicitly declared unacceptable hours earlier.

The International Maritime Organization announced the pause in its Hormuz evacuation initiative on Thursday after the container ship Ever Lovely, operated by Evergreen Marine, reported being hit on its starboard side by an unknown projectile approximately fourteen kilometres ...