Trump vows to declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory. Iran: Hormuz remains Iran's

Iran on Saturday rejected US President Donald Trump’s claim that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory, saying the crucial energy waterway “will remain Iranian.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted on X: “The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian.” He added: “This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran's command.”

Trump has repeatedly said the strait is under US control, a claim Iran denies. He told a political rally in New York state on Friday that after the US defeats Iran, “pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.” An unnamed White House official later clarified that Trump was joking, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tehran effectively closed the strait at the start of the Middle East war in late February. Last week, top Iranian official Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr set conditions for reopening it, including an end to the “war and aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq,” the end of crippling sanctions, the release of frozen assets and compensation for wartime damage.

Attacks in the Hormuz Strait have continued as diplomacy stalls between the United States and Iran. United Arab Emirates state-owned oil company ADNOC said Saturday that one of its vessels came under attack the previous night, Al-Monitor reported. On Friday, the UAE blamed Iran for other attacks on two vessels linked to ADNOC as they passed through the strait, incidents that led to the collapse of an April ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. As Iran throttles traffic in Hormuz, its Houthi allies in Yemen have declared a parallel maritime blockade on Saudi ports in the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia’s only other maritime route.

A June deal between Washington and Tehran said Iran and Oman would work out future arrangements for the strait with other Gulf countries and “in line with the applicable international law,” while Tehran signalled last week it was finalising joint management arrangements with Oman. Before the war, Hormuz carried around a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG exports, and prices have repeatedly surged since the dispute erupted. Iran wants to control the strait and charge tolls, powers it did not exercise before the war and that the US would fiercely oppose. The US has imposed its own retaliatory blockade of Iranian ports, and Trump said Friday: “We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”