US President Donald Trump on Friday repeated his claim that he views the Strait of Hormuz as part of the United States of America.
US President Donald Trump on Friday repeated his claim that he views the Strait of Hormuz as part of the United States of America. “I view the Strait of Hormuz as an American territory right now. It’s an American territory,” the American leader said in a political rally on Friday night.
He went on to state that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon as he attempted to defend his decision to go to war against the West Asian nation. It is pertinent to note that Trump’s remarks on the matter came during a rally in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon; we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, or you will see some very bad things,” Trump said. “We went down, and we stopped them; they will never have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Trump went on to claim that Iran wanted to reach an agreement with the United States but questioned whether Washington would accept a deal, asserting control over the strategic waterway. “They want to make a deal so badly; we don’t even know if we want [a deal] because I view the Strait of Hormuz as an American territory right now; it’s an American territory,” Trump said.
More from WorldUS in ‘total control’
While speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before departing for Myrtle Beach, Trump claimed that the United States had “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz and supported the idea of declaring the strategic waterway a US territory. He went on to insist that Washington had control over the region linked to the Strait of Hormuz amid its blockade against Iran.
“We’re just going to sort of see what happens, and we have total control, as you know, of the border; we have total control — if you look at the blockade, we have total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said.
The American leader maintained that while Iran wants to make the deal, it was not ready for what he called “the right deal”. “So they would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal in my opinion,” Trump said. The remarks from Trump came amid growing tensions between Washington and Tehran over the strategic waterway, through which a significant share of global energy supplies passes.
How Iran is reacting
Earlier, Trump stirred headlines after he shared an AI-generated image on his Truth Social platform depicting the strategic waterway as “NEW US Territory” as he continued to stake a claim over the region. Meanwhile, Iran has rejected such assertions.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the US President’s assertions over the Strait of Hormuz would be “corrected” either by circumstances or by Iran. “Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the eternal Persian Gulf, soon his delusion regarding the Strait of Hormuz will either be corrected, or we will correct the delusions of this deluded man,” Gharibabadi said in a post on X.
In a separate statement, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council head Mohsen Rezaei objected to Trump’s remarks, saying, “The gap between America’s inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and its claim to own it is greater than the 7,000-mile distance between Washington and the Strait itself. Welcome to the post-American order in the Persian Gulf,” according to his post on X.