ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A deputy to Iran’s foreign minister said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz will “remain” Iranian territory, a day after US President Donald Trump said he plans to declare the strategic waterway US territory.
“Trump has said that, following Iran’s defeat, he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory! The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized with a tweet or an aircraft carrier, nor through an executive order or an election speech. Iran neither fears threats nor is intimidated by displays of power,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said on X.
Gharibabadi added that Iran has suffered neither strategic defeat nor been intimidated by US displays of military power, insisting that the strait “has been, is, and will remain Iranian.”
Addressing a political rally in New York on Friday, Trump said he would declare the Strait of Hormuz a “territory” of the US, adding that “we have a blockade; no ships get through unless we want them to.”
Trump’s remarks came a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that Washington risks an "even bigger miscalculation" over the strategic waterway.
"The U.S. has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures. Case in point: the war on Iran. Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormuz," Araghchi wrote on X. "Worse than fake news is fake intelligence. Be careful.”
On Tuesday, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), a newly formed Iranian government agency tasked with regulating maritime transit through Hormuz, said in a post on X that the strait “remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran's conditions are accepted.”
Iran’s conditions include a complete end to the conflict, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and a region-wide ceasefire encompassing Lebanon and Gaza.
