WASHINGTON — Iran announced Tuesday that it had closed parts of the Strait of Hormuz for military drills after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly mocked President Trump while negotiators met in Geneva to discuss the regime’s nuclear program.
Iranian state media announced that Tehran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops had fired live missiles toward the strait and would close it for several hours due to “safety and maritime concerns.”
Approximately 20% of the world’s seaborne oil trade moves through the strait, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei openly taunted President Trump on Tuesday as tensions rise between their countries. ZUMAPRESS.com
Iran has announced closures of the waterway in the past, but Tuesday marked the first time it had done so since the US began moving aircraft carriers and other assets to the region and threatening the overthrow of the Tehran regime following widespread protests last month.
The US military’s Central Command did not immediately comment.
Earlier, Khamenei threatened that Iran’s forces could hit the powerful American naval presence in the region “so hard, it cannot get up.”
“The US president says their army is the world’s strongest, but the strongest army in the world can sometimes be slapped so hard it cannot get up,” the ayatollah said in comments published by Iraninan media.
The dictator — whose brutal crackdown on nationwide protests last month has killed at least 7,000, according to human rights organizations — also threatened on X to sink US warships. Trump had vowed to come to the protesters’ rescue early last month, but has thus far declined to take military action against Iran.
“The Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran,” Khamenei’s team posted on his English X account. “Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.”
An Iranian boat firing a missile during a military exercise by members of the IRGC and navy in the Gulf on February 16. SEPAH NEWS/AFP via Getty Images
Tuesday’s talks follow the Feb. 6 discussions in Oman that leaders from both countries, including Trump, described as positive.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were expected to partake in the second round of talks this month.
Trump has not ruled out the use of military force against the theocratic regime, and his military buildup in the region mirrors the one he amassed near Venezuela before the Jan. 3 raid to capture strongman Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
Khamenei said Trump’s army could be “slapped so hard it cannot get up.” AFP via Getty Images
Just last week, Trump revealed he dispatched the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Middle East to join the USS Abraham Lincoln and a fleet assembled in the region, amid a remarkable naval buildup.
When asked if the US could target the Tehran regime’s nuclear sites again, Trump replied, “If we do it, that would be the least of the mission.”
Last year, Trump greenlit Operation Midnight Hammer to bomb three of Iran’s top nuclear facilities, a mission he claimed “completely and totally obliterated” those facilities, which the US alleged were used for a nuclear weapons program.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps shows a target being hit during a military exercise on Feb. 16, 2026. SEPAH NEWS/AFP via Getty Images
A rocket is launched from a vehicle during a military exercise by members of the IRGC on Feb. 16, 2026. SEPAH NEWS/AFP via Getty Images
Iran has denied that it has been pursuing a nuclear weapon, despite having at one point enriched at 60%, far above the threshold needed for nuclear power plants.
“I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” Trump told reporters Monday evening.
In 2018, Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal brokered under the Obama administration. The Biden administration tried unsuccessfully to revive that deal.
Trump administration officials have made clear they want Iran to end its alleged nuclear weapons program, its ballistic missile program and funding of terrorist proxies in the region.
“We are ready to discuss this and other issues related to our program if they are ready to talk about sanctions,” Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Tehran’s deputy foreign minister, told the BBC on Sunday. Takht-Ravanchi ruled on concessions on the country’s ballistic missile program.