US President Donald Trump declared on Friday that he would "pretty soon" claim the Strait of Hormuz as American territory, making the announcement to a cheering crowd at a police academy in Garden City, New York. "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 said, adding that no ships pass through without American approval. The remarks, delivered with what observers described as a chuckle, came as fresh Iranian attacks on commercial vessels brought shipping through the waterway to a near standstill and underscored how dramatically the six-month-old conflict has evolved.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply normally flows. Since the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran on 28 February, ostensibly to eliminate Tehran's nuclear programme, Iran has seized effective control of large sections of the strait, repeatedly attacking commercial ships and demanding fees for passage. The US Navy has responded with a blockade of Iranian ports. Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, directly rejected Trump's claim in a post on X, writing that the strait "was, is and will remain Iranian" and that it "cannot be seized with a tweet, an aircraft carrier, an order or a campaign speech."
The escalation over the waterway coincided with fresh attacks on Gulf shipping. The United Arab Emirates accused Iran of striking two vessels belonging to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), a state-owned energy firm, while ADNOC separately confirmed that one of its ships was attacked on Friday evening during transit through the strait, though with no casualties. Britain's maritime trade monitoring body reported two near-identical drone strikes on tankers causing minor damage. Vessel-tracking data showed that by Friday only two non-oil ships had passed through the strait, with no crude shipments visible — a dramatic slowdown that rattled energy markets and regional governments alike. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE all condemned the attacks and demanded an unconditional return to free navigation.
The conflict is also spilling across borders. In Yemen, Houthi forces — an armed movement that controls much of the country's north and has aligned itself with Tehran — fired multiple ballistic missiles at the Red Sea port of Mocha, in southwestern Yemen's Taiz governorate, killing eight people and setting fire to two commercial vessels docked there. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree claimed the strikes targeted Saudi-backed military positions, a characterisation disputed by the internationally recognised Yemeni government, which said the attack struck civilian infrastructure. Separately, the Houthi-run Saba news agency reported a drone strike on an Aramco facility in Najran, a city in southwestern Saudi Arabia, though Riyadh and Saudi Aramco had not confirmed the incident at the time of publication.
Why this matters: Trump's territorial claim, even if legally untenable under international law — Al Jazeera's Washington correspondent noted it "overstates" actual US control — signals that the administration is digging in rather than seeking a quick diplomatic exit. Vice-President JD Vance acknowledged on Fox News that keeping fuel prices low had overtaken nuclear non-proliferation as Washington's most immediate concern, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened economic sanctions "like the world has never seen" against Tehran. With US missile stockpiles reportedly depleted by months of strikes, Trump's approval rating falling, and midterm elections approaching in November, the Strait of Hormuz has become the central battlefield — not on the ground, but in the global economy. Countries such as South Korea, which depend heavily on the waterway for energy imports, are watching closely for any sign of a diplomatic breakthrough that has so far failed to materialise.