U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he intends to declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory once the war with Iran concludes, an escalation in rhetoric over the strategic waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump told a crowd of law enforcement officers at the Nassau County Police Academy in New York.
Trump gave no details on how the declaration would be carried out or what legal basis it would rest on. The strait, which separates Iran’s northern coast from Oman’s to the south, falls under the jurisdictions of both countries under international maritime law, and the United States currently has no territorial claim to it.
“We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to,” Trump said, referring to the U.S. naval blockade imposed on Iranian ports since the outbreak of hostilities in February.
Iranian officials dismissed the remarks. Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh said the strait “cannot be taken over by a tweet, nor by an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing a decree,” adding that Iran was “neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by a show of force.”
Trump’s comments follow weeks of rising rhetoric over control of the waterway. He wrote on Truth Social earlier this week that the U.S. had “total control” over the strait, and last month floated the idea of the U.S. acting as its “guardian” while collecting a 20% fee on goods passing through — a proposal legal experts say would violate international law protections for free maritime transit.
The war between the U.S., Israel and Iran began in late February with joint American-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Oil prices have risen sharply since fighting began, as Iran has moved to restrict shipping traffic through the strait.
