President Donald Trump says the United States already “owns” the Strait of Hormuz through its blockade of Iran — and he is now promising to make that claim official when Tehran is defeated.
The president’s claim over the vital oil passage has become a direct showdown with Iran, whose deputy foreign minister insisted Friday that the waterway “has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian.”
Trump previewed the territorial move while arguing that the U.S. naval blockade had already given Washington control over which ships could move through the strait.
“We totally control, we own, in the true sense, we own the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump told Fox News. “We only allow boats to come in if we want them to come in.”
At a rally at the Nassau County Police Academy Center for Training and Intelligence in Garden City, Trump took the claim further as he talked about fuel prices, the war with Iran and his administration’s record.
Trump: After we finish defeating Iran, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States. pic.twitter.com/8cu9gem82b
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 14, 2026
“We’re bringing the prices way down; look at what’s happening! Coming way down,” Trump said. “And 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.”
He said the blockade was already functioning as the practical version of that claim, because ships could no longer pass without U.S. approval.
“Essentially that’s what — we have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to,” Trump said. “And how about Venezuela? Venezuela was a one-day war, and now we work great with them.”
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The president called the U.S. naval cordon “unstoppable” and a “wall of steel,” while framing the blockade as something that benefited other countries too.
“What we are doing is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves, for the world,” Trump said.
The fight over Hormuz comes 167 days after the U.S. and Israel began a joint military operation against Iran’s nuclear capabilities and leadership.
CBS News has treated the strait as a waterway traditionally open to shipping, despite being split between Iran and Oman at its narrowest point.
Before U.S. strikes on Iran began earlier this year, the Strait of Hormuz served as a vital shipping lane for global oil. Since the conflict began, ship traffic through the narrow passage has slowed so dramatically that transit rights have become a central issue in U.S.-Iran peace negotiations.
Iran has demanded the ability to charge a toll on tankers and other vessels crossing the trade route, while Trump has insisted Tehran cannot be allowed to keep nuclear capability.
Trump has also told Americans not to judge the war only by the price at the pump.
“For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a… it’s the number one state sponsor of terror in the world… We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in an address at the Nassau County Police Academy.
He said he would not apologize even if gas prices reached $4.
“Remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4,” Trump said. “I did the right thing.”
The president described the campaign in the Middle East as an attempt to stop something much worse from breaking out.
“We have to make a little journey to the Middle East because we have to put out a potential disaster, a potential very big fire, a fire like you’ve never seen. We can’t let Iran keep going,” Trump said, repeating that Iran can “never have a nuclear weapon.”
He also defended using American military force against Tehran.
“If we didn’t hit them, you would’ve had a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of the earlier U.S. strikes. “It would have been a very sad day for this country and the entire world.”
Trump said he had used the military “a little bit more than I wanted to, frankly, but that’s okay.”
The blockade is also being paired with a financial campaign that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said will intensify next week.
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country,” Bessent said Thursday.
Bessent called the administration’s approach a “one-two punch” of financial pressure and control over Iranian ports.
“It will be a combination of economic isolation like the world has never seen before, and the continued blockade in the Strait of Hormuz that will keep anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports,” Bessent said.
Trump said Iran was already losing “hundreds of millions of dollars every single day” because of the blockade.
“We’ve got economic sanctions against them like nobody’s ever had before,” he said.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the U.S. Navy could keep the blockade going “indefinitely,” with American warships rotating through the region as needed.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi rejected Trump’s version of events on X and accused the U.S. of chasing “fanciful delusions.”
“Once and for all, accept the reality: up to this point, you have suffered strategic and heavy defeats; the Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian,” Gharibabadi wrote.
“This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command,” he continued.
Gharibabadi said Tehran would keep its own shipping restrictions in place until the United States accepts what he called its “strategic defeat.”
Trump, meanwhile, warned that Iran should not expect the coming November midterm elections to limit an American response if Tehran escalates.
“We’re capable of really destroying the whole place. We don’t want to do that,” Trump said. “If they hit, we would hit back 100 times harder.”
