President Donald Trump doubled down Monday on declaring the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory, asserting that Washington has “total control” of the strategic waterway as Tehran threatened a military attack to break the U.S. naval blockade and declared a shift toward a more offensive posture.
“I just think it’s a great idea,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked to elaborate on his suggestion last week that the strait could be declared U.S. territory.
Trump repeatedly pointed to the blockade as the basis for American control.
“We control it. We control it with the blockade,” he said. “And I like the idea of declaring it a territory. We could do that. We have total control over the strait.”
Trump said Iran could still prove a “nuisance” by placing mines in the water, but described the blockade as “very effective” and touted the amount of oil now moving through the waterway.
“We’re taking out millions of barrels of oil a week,” Trump said, adding that the strait was open and oil prices would continue falling “unless we decide to do something far more drastic than we’re doing.”
He then pointed to the pressure facing Tehran.
“Iran is in big trouble,” Trump said. “They have 300% inflation. The country’s a mess, and their military is totally defeated.”
Trump’s remarks came as the 60-day negotiating period envisioned under the June U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding expired Monday, long after the fragile arrangement had largely unraveled amid renewed Iranian attacks on commercial vessels and subsequent U.S. strikes.
Trump said Washington is not seeking to extend the memorandum and expressed little confidence that Tehran would accept terms he considers sufficient to end the confrontation.
“They want to make a deal, but they’re not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary,” Trump said.
He made clear that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon remains his bottom line.
“Look, we’re in there for one reason. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “You understand that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump reinforced the point earlier Monday on Truth Social, writing that the “number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon.”
Tehran, meanwhile, sought to impose a new timetable of its own, with a senior Iranian official telling Reuters that Washington has only “a few weeks” to fully implement Iran’s interpretation of the June memorandum before further negotiations can take place.
If diplomacy fails, the official threatened, Iran would carry out a “timely and precise” military attack aimed at breaking the U.S. naval blockade.
“Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region,” the official told the outlet, saying Tehran was moving from what it describes as a defensive posture toward a more offensive strategy.
The official also accused Washington of having no genuine interest in a ceasefire, claiming that reliance on mediators to secure a lasting settlement was no longer realistic.
That threat comes amid growing evidence that Iran’s hard-line leadership has been preparing for a broader confrontation even while its diplomats pursued negotiations.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing intercepted communications and other intelligence gathered by Arab governments, that Tehran used the period following the June memorandum to prepare for a potentially larger and longer conflict.
According to the report, Iran has moved to further consolidate command over its military establishment, accelerate missile and drone production, expand domestic counterintelligence and surveillance operations, and deepen coordination with Iranian-backed proxies and militias in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.
The public rhetoric has increasingly mirrored those reported preparations.
IRGC political deputy Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani said Iran’s armed forces would adopt a “transformative” approach under the country’s recently reshuffled military leadership and warned that operations Tehran characterizes as defensive could increasingly take an offensive form.
“Perhaps they should expect strategic surprises,” Javani said.
The IRGC separately declared Monday that its forces would “decisively crush any threat or aggression” under what it called a strategy of “maximum deterrence and powerful offensive operations.”
The threats come as the U.S. military continues enforcing what Central Command has described as its “steel wall blockade” against Iran.
CENTCOM said Monday that American forces have redirected 64 commercial vessels, disabled three, and boarded two to enforce compliance with the blockade.
Trump had earlier called on Tehran to surrender during a phone interview with Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst.
“They should put up the white flag of surrender,” Trump said.
At the same time, the president indicated he was prepared to let the economic and military pressure continue rather than impose another deadline.
“I have no time schedule. I’m not in a hurry,” Trump said, rejecting suggestions that the November midterm elections were driving his approach.
Describing Iran’s negotiating posture, Trump added: “They’re good poker players, but they’re dying.”
Trump also confirmed to Yingst that U.S. officials have a direct backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a claim the IRGC publicly denied hours later.
“There are no talks taking place between IRGC officials and the Americans,” IRGC spokesman Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohebbi said, accusing Trump of making a “lie” born of what he characterized as American “defeat and desperation.”
“The IRGC is the arm and voice of the power of the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic, and it speaks its word on the battlefield,” Mohebbi added.
A separate diplomatic fight has emerged over Oman’s parallel negotiations with Tehran on future shipping arrangements through Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday that Tehran and Muscat had reached an understanding on the map of a maritime transit route through the strait, while acknowledging that a broader agreement and joint statement had not yet been finalized.
Baghaei said the talks were continuing “in earnest” toward a mechanism Tehran says would protect the sovereign rights of Iran and Oman while allowing commercial traffic.
Trump issued an extraordinary warning when Yingst asked him about those negotiations.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump said.
Asked later in the Oval Office whether he had run out of patience with the longtime U.S. partner, Trump said no, but sharply criticized Muscat’s conduct.
“I don’t think they behaved very well, but we’d handle them very easily, just like we do other things,” Trump said.
The dispute over Hormuz has been at the heart of the collapse of the June memorandum. Tehran has asserted that the agreement gave it authority to manage shipping through the strategic waterway and subsequently attacked vessels it accused of using unauthorized routes, while Washington has rejected Iran’s interpretation and demanded unrestricted, toll-free commercial passage.
Baghaei argued Monday that the memorandum’s 60-day negotiating period had become “entirely moot,” claiming that U.S. violations prevented substantive nuclear and sanctions talks from ever beginning.
Washington, meanwhile, has continued tightening economic pressure while maintaining the blockade, putting additional strain on an Iranian economy already battered by war, sanctions, inflation, and severe shortages.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the economic pressure last week, saying Tehran had lost access to a vital source of revenue.
“We could sell oil, and now we can’t,” Pezeshkian said.
Trump has argued that the pressure leaves Washington with time on its side, while dismissing concerns that continued fighting could exhaust American weapons inventories.
“What we’ve used so far is peanuts,” Trump told Fox News on Monday, adding that the United States still has “a lot of mid-level weapons.”
Iran’s military leadership, however, is signaling that it intends to respond to that pressure not by backing down, but by preparing for a potentially broader confrontation.
The General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces vowed over the weekend to continue fighting until what it called the “complete defeat” of the United States and Israel and until its enemies are forced to “surrender.”
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, one of Tehran’s principal negotiators with Washington, separately claimed that Iran had already prevailed militarily and politically because the United States and Israel had failed to achieve their stated objectives.
“I say with complete conviction that we won this war, both militarily and politically,” Ghalibaf said.
The declarations underscore the widening gap between the two sides as the June framework expires: Trump is claiming “total control” of Hormuz and demanding Iran surrender, while Tehran is threatening to attack the blockade and preparing its forces for what it now openly describes as a more offensive phase of the conflict.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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