Trump Wants to Take Over a Key Shipping Route Between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Here's Why It Matters.
On Friday, August 14, 2026, Donald Trump threatened to declare the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow strip of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula — as belonging to the United States, once the ongoing war with Iran concludes. The strait has been effectively closed since the US and Israel launched military operations against Iran in February 2026.
Speaking at a police academy on Long Island, New York, Trump said: "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. Essentially, that's what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to." (The Guardian)
The strait connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world. About a fifth of all oil transported by sea normally passes through it. Think of it as a toll booth on a highway that nearly every oil tanker in the region must pass through. Since the war began, that route has been almost entirely shut down, sending fuel prices sharply higher. Trump asked Americans to accept those higher gasoline costs, saying they are helping prevent Iran — which he called the No 1 state sponsor of terror — from getting a nuclear weapon. (Reuters; The Guardian)
Peace talks are stuck. Iran says it will not reopen the strait unless the US "corrects its behavior," pays to compensate Iran for war damage, lifts sanctions (official restrictions meant to pressure a country economically), and releases frozen Iranian assets. That is a steep set of demands, and it effectively makes the strait a bargaining tool in the wider negotiations. (The Guardian)
Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, responded on X, saying Tehran would not be intimidated and that the strait would only be opened or closed under Iran's own authority. In other words, Iran sees control of the waterway as a right that belongs to a sovereign nation, not something it would give up under military pressure. (The Guardian)
Trump's Friday speech builds on comments from earlier in the week, when he said on Truth Social that the US had "total control" over the strait and added, "I think we will keep it." Going from saying the US has control to saying the strait should be US territory is a step up in rhetoric, though how such a declaration would actually work in practice has not been explained. (The Guardian)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio separately said in May 2026 that Iran's idea of charging a toll on ships passing through the strait would make any negotiated deal "unfeasible," according to the Associated Press. That position came before the latest escalation, but it sets the State Department's baseline: Iran's terms for managing the waterway do not match what the US is willing to accept. (AP News)
The broader context here is a six-month conflict that has shut down one of the world's most important shipping lanes, with no clear diplomatic way out. Both sides have taken hard-line positions: Trump says the US should control the strait on its own; Iran says it will not reopen the waterway unless the US pays for war damage, lifts sanctions, and releases frozen assets. The gap between those positions is not getting smaller, and each new public statement seems to push them further apart rather than closer together.
For energy markets, the implications are straightforward. With about 20 percent of the world's oil shipped by sea normally passing through Hormuz, the continued closure keeps pushing prices up, and neither side's rhetoric is likely to change that. Trump's message that higher gasoline costs are a necessary sacrifice to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon suggests his administration is willing to accept the political risk of expensive fuel rather than make a deal on Iran's terms.
Whether the US could legally claim an international waterway as its own territory is an open question Trump's speech did not address. There is a global agreement called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that governs who can use the world's oceans and straits. The US has never officially joined that agreement, though it follows many of its rules in practice. Iran, Oman, and other countries in the region also have claims over the strait, and any US attempt to claim sovereignty would likely face objections not just from Iran but from neighboring Gulf countries that depend on the strait for their own oil exports. Under international law, ships from all countries generally have the right to pass through straits used for international travel — a principle a US territorial claim would directly violate.
The question now is whether this rhetoric turns into actual policy or stays as a pressure tactic. Trump said the declaration would only happen after "finishing defeating Iran," which ties the strait's future to a military outcome that has not yet been reached. Until then, the threat works more as a signal of what the administration wants rather than an order that can be carried out. But the pattern of increasingly bold statements — from "total control" to "territory of the United States" — suggests the administration may be preparing the public at home and abroad for a long-term American presence at this chokepoint, no matter how or when the war ends.
