Trump renews Iran blockade and again threatens to take control of strait of Hormuz
US president declares strait open and demands tariff as both sides engage in heavy drone and missile exchanges
Donald Trump has once again threatened to take control of the strait of Hormuz, as he announced the reimposition of a naval blockade on Iran and demanded a 20% tariff for all cargoes shipped through the key maritime passage.
Declaring the strait “open”, Trump suggested in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US should be known henceforth as the “Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz”, as Iran and the US engaged in some of the heaviest drone and missile exchanges since an interim deal was negotiated to bring an end to the conflict.
Trump has made numerous previous claims and threats over the months of the war with Iran, including frequent claims of victory, many of which have had little grounding in reality, and it remained unclear whether he had given orders to the US Navy to force transit passage. It also remains unclear in practical terms how easy it would be for the navy to do so.
Trump’s demand for a 20% tariff comes despite his administration’s previous insistence that no country should be allowed to charge fees for passages used for international navigation.
That stance was reiterated last month by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who said: “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accused the US on Monday of jeopardising global oil and gas supplies by interfering in the strait, as Tehran threatened that any US moves would be “strongly contested”.
The IRGC spokesperson Hossein Mohebi said Washington had “seriously endangered the security of the world’s oil and gas supply and must be held accountable”, adding in a post on X that Tehran would “continue to exercise sovereignty over and management of the strait of Hormuz”.
US and Iranian forces exchanged missile and drone attacks on Monday. The IRGC said it had targeted US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, destroyed radar systems in Oman and hit fuel tanks and ammunition depots at Prince Hassan airbase in Jordan in response to American strikes.
The US military said it had struck Iranian air defence systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities and small boats on Sunday using aircraft, naval vessels and drones.
On Monday morning, loud explosions were heard on Iran’s Qeshm Island and in the port city of Bandar Abbas.
Trump said the US would probably take over the strait and should be reimbursed for controlling the waterway. “We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Trump said in a phone interview on Fox News. “We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that.”
The exchanges marked an escalation in the pace and geographic scope of attacks over the past week after the near total collapse of an interim ceasefire.
Trump earlier said the US was “beating up” Iran, while also apparently leaving a door open for yet another round of talks. His administration has struggled to get a grip on the Middle East crisis triggered by the US and Israel’s attack on Iran earlier this year.
Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on social media on Sunday: “The era of one-sided deals is OVER. We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”
Brent crude oil prices rose more than 3% on Monday, although they remained well below peaks reached earlier in the conflict.
Iran and the US are in theory nearly at the midway point of the 60-day period of an interim deal that was supposed to set up talks for a permanent end to the war, which began in February with the assassination of Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in US-Israeli airstrikes.
In reality, that deal has devolved into a series of attacks over the strait of Hormuz, worrying world leaders that the war could fully resume.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “A return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences.”
The war has spread across the region, with Iran attacking US bases in multiple countries. Thousands of people have been killed, mainly in Iran and Lebanon.
Iran’s strikes on Sunday extended to Qatar, a mediator in ceasefire talks that had not come under attack since April. The United Arab Emirates, which had not been targeted since early May, said its air defences had engaged missiles and drones from Iran.
The conflict has caused global economic shockwaves since it began in late February, driving energy prices higher and fuelling global inflation. Higher prices – especially for petrol – are politically sensitive for Trump in the run-up to November’s US congressional elections.
Iran condemned the latest wave of US attacks, the foreign ministry saying they had “rendered futile all efforts of the past few months to reduce tension and establish peace in the west Asian region”.
It added: “The US regime has also caused the return of insecurity in the strait of Hormuz and disruption of international commercial shipping by openly interfering in the process of Iran implementing the necessary arrangements in the strait of Hormuz.”
The ministry said talks between Iran and Oman on Saturday – which focused on arrangements for managing the strait and transit routes – were unable to reach a deal as a result of “overt and covert” US pressure on Muscat.
Iran has sought to establish a permanent system for collecting fees in the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas shipments transited before the war, and has warned vessels not to sail without its authorisation.
Its recently created Persian Gulf Strait Authority said on Sunday that passage through the strait was not possible because of what it called recent illegal US military movements in the region. Permits would be issued “as soon as stability and calm are restored”, it added.
The US, which revoked the licence authorising the sale of Iranian crude oil on Tuesday after earlier attacks on shipping, said its forces were positioned to safeguard freedom of navigation, despite what it described as “aggression, harassment, threats and arbitrary declarations” from Iran.
The US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center reiterated guidance that despite a severe security threat, an “expanded” southern route near Oman was available for two-way traffic.
Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report