RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 4 sourcesThe president reasserts that the U.S. will takeover the Middle East passageway it hasn’t been able to get under control for months — and even parts of Iran — in taunting new Truth Social post
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Donald Trump posted a map identifying the Strait of Hormuz as “new U.S. territory” on Tuesday, echoing a threat he made last week under the continued pressure of the key waterway’s contested nature.
The president is facing rising anti-war sentiment across America and the understanding on Capitol Hill, even among his own party, that the war against Iran is unpopular and driving up costs for Americans with only weeks to go before voters will determine control of Congress.
Trump, according to reporting, is desperate to find a way to mark the military effort as a victory as negotiations with the Iranian government — which he once claimed he’d overthrow, or could easily — have collapsed, and the U.S. appears no closer to a deal restricting the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
The Strait of Hormuz remains a dangerous zone for tankers and other ships as Iranian mines and drone attacks remain a threat for vessels that stray from one of two approved routes through the waterway. Traffic remains at a crawl.
In a captionless post on Truth Social on Tuesday morning, the president circled the strait and labeled it “new U.S. territory.”
U.S. forces, however, have been unable to guarantee safe passage for ships through the strait thus far and the circle depicted on Trump’s map actually includes quite a bit of Iranian land on the northern borders of the strait. That would imply a partial U.S. occupation of Iranian soil.
The president first claimed that the strait would be “U.S. territory” at an event in New York last week.
“Pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” he told attendees at a political rally.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister responded, calling the president’s assertion a “delusion” and warning that the U.S. could not seize the waterway by “tweet” or with military force.
“This strait will only be opened and closed under Iran’s command, and as long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and stop indulging in delusions, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade,” said Kazem Gharibabadi on X.
Trump and the White House reportedly view reopening the strait and relieving the stress put on Americans by higher gas prices as a top priority, where once the stated goal of the military incursion in Iran was the end of Iran’s nuclear program and the securing of enriched nuclear material. But the president’s demands have grown more wild and untethered as the conflict has drags on, and last week he insisted that Iran pay war reparations for Americans kiled by Iranian forces over decades.
Gas prices have jumped by more than $1 per gallon on average across the country since late February when the war began, and Americans’ dissatisfaction with the administration has been fueled in part by the pronouncements of various figures around the president, as well as Trump himself, that the war would conclude in a matter of weeks. The conflict is now only about a week away from reaching its six-month mark.
There’s no sign that official negotiations are ongoing, though the president confirmed that a backchannel with Iranian officials does exist. While the president himself has repeatedly insisted that he does not view the midterm elections as a deadline for ending the war, his allies in Congress have said the opposite and warned that the effects of the war are putting Republicans in dire straits.
“This situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can't imagine,” West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican, told reporters on Monday according to Punchbowl News . He added that his party was “scared to death about the midterms”.
White House officials and allies of the president celebrated in June when a 60-day memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed to extend a ceasefire that was already in place between the U.S. and Iran. That MOU appeared to open the door to talks concerning Iran’s nuclear program and was poised to allow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to resume at close to pre-war levels.
But the deal, which officially expired on Monday, collapsed almost immediately after Iranian officials contended that the deal gave the country control over the strait and asserted restrictions on vessels transiting through it, firing upon those that disobeyed. U.S. and Iranian forces have traded fire in the weeks since the deal collapsed, resulting in the deaths of three U.S. service members and injuries to more.
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