Sat 15 August 2026:
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would be soon declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory, escalating his rhetoric over the vital waterway that carries a significant share of global oil supplies.
Trump told Fox News on Friday that the United States will hit Iran hard economically as Washington and Tehran struggle to reach a deal to end a nearly six month conflict.
His comments came a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. was going to apply measures that have “never been seen” on Tehran as soon as next week.
Trump, together with Israel, launched a war against Iran on February 28 with the stated aims of ending the country’s controversial nuclear program and sparking a popular uprising.
However, Iran struck back by establishing de facto control over much of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway for large amounts of global energy and other commodity shipping.
The United States remains locked in a stalemate with Iran over the strait, with Iran denying access to much of the civilian shipping and the US Navy mounting a blockade of Iranian ports in an attempt to cripple its economy.
Trump does not take his own claim of taking over Hormuz ‘particularly seriously’
It’s clear the US president, with a chuckle as he said that, even himself, is not taking this particularly seriously, given the fact that there is already an international waterway in the Strait of Hormuz where ships are traversing back and forth.
Also, these are the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. But what the US president likes to do is get under the skin of adversaries, and, in this case, it’s Iran.
What we should point out, though, is what the US president is not backing down on is the fact that there is a naval blockade by the United States in effect in the Strait of Hormuz, and that is ongoing.
In fact, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that there will be ships that will be interchanged in order to continue and prolong that naval blockade.
So, the US president is trying to exert control. What is important to point out, however, is that he said no ships are going in and out of the strait unless the US wants them to.
That’s not entirely true. What we know is that there is some traffic that is going through, but it has slowed down significantly.
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Iran ‘probably can resist’ tighter US economic pressure
Iran is likely to be able to resist the increased economic pressure the United States is threatening to impose on the country to try to force it to open the Strait of Hormuz, says Dan Grazier, director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center.
“The Iranians probably can resist this. The Iranians, at least as far as the United States is concerned, have been a pariah state since 1979, and they’ve been subject to lots of sanctions over the years,” Grazier told Al Jazeera.
“So, it’s interesting to think that the administration believes that a form of economic warfare is now going to produce the kind of results that six months of military strikes have not been able to accomplish.”
He said Washington’s growing focus on economic pressure is probably being dictated by the US military’s reportedly dwindling munitions stockpiles.
“There are contradictory statements coming out of the administration. But from the available evidence, it does appear that the United States military is short of the kind of long-range munitions that you need to fight a war from a distance, which is exactly the kind of military strategy that the United States has used so far in this campaign,” said Grazier, a former Marine Corps officer.
“And the US military has other obligations, security obligations around the world, so it’s important that we don’t … run completely out of ammunition. So, those kinds of shortages necessitate a change in strategy. I think that’s why the administration has shifted to this kind of economic warfare.”
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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