TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / August 15, 2026
Iran rejected Trump’s claim that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory, insisting Tehran alone determines access to the strategic waterway.
Iran has sharply rejected US President Donald Trump’s declaration that he intends to designate the Strait of Hormuz as US territory, insisting that Tehran alone will determine whether the strategic waterway remains open or closed.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi responded on Saturday to Trump’s remarks, saying control over the strait could not be established through threats or displays of military power.
“The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized with a tweet, an aircraft carrier or a speech,” Gharibabadi said, according to Al-Mayadeen.
He added that Iran was neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by displays of force.
“Accept the truth once and for all. You have suffered heavy strategic defeats,” the Iranian official said.
Gharibabadi then issued an explicit rejection of Trump’s claim over the strategic waterway.
“The Strait of Hormuz was Iranian, is Iranian now and will remain Iranian, and this strait will only be closed and opened by Iran’s order,” he said.
“As long as you do not accept the reality of your defeat and do not stop weaving illusions, Iran will continue imposing the blockade.”
‘Very badly defeated’
Gharibabadi’s comments came after Trump said on Friday that he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States.
“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,” Trump said during a political gathering at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, New York.
Trump also claimed that Washington remained in control of maritime traffic through the strait.
“No ships get through unless we want them to,” he said, describing the US naval blockade against Iran as a “steel wall.”
Iran has disputed Washington’s claims that it controls the waterway.
Iran’s central military command on Thursday described US assertions regarding the strait as “baseless lies and fabrications.”
According to Kpler shipping data cited by CNN, 3,371 vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz during the first 166 days of the war through August 12, equivalent to around 20 percent of pre-war traffic.
Trump also claimed that Iran was suffering major military losses and that Washington’s campaign had severely reduced Tehran’s ability to produce missiles.
The US president said Iran’s first-, second- and third-tier leadership had been eliminated, claiming there was effectively no senior leadership left with whom Washington could negotiate.
He further claimed that Iran’s missile manufacturing capabilities had fallen by 82 percent and that the missiles and drones remaining in Tehran’s arsenal represented only a fraction of its pre-war capabilities.
Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected Washington’s assessments of the damage inflicted on the country’s military infrastructure.
The dispute comes as negotiations between Washington and Tehran remain stalled despite a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire reached in April and an agreement signed on June 17 that launched negotiations toward a final settlement.
The two sides subsequently exchanged another round of military strikes between July 8 and 24, with the US attacking targets inside Iran and Tehran retaliating against what it described as American military facilities and equipment across the region.
US military ‘subdued’
Separately on Saturday, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi stated that Iranian forces had “subdued” the US military during months of fighting.
In a message to IRGC forces marking six months of fighting, Vahidi praised their performance under difficult battlefield and environmental conditions.
“You subdued the strongest army in the history of the world by relying on Almighty God and through your victorious fighting under extremely difficult conditions,” Vahidi said.
He cited Iranian offensive and defensive operations conducted under heavy fire and across the country’s southern islands, coasts and northern highlands.
IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohabbi had previously said that the war exposed what he described as the United States’ “strategic weakness.”
According to Mohabbi, Iran’s confrontation with one of the world’s most powerful states demonstrated Tehran’s ability to affect military, economic and political calculations and placed Washington in a position of “strategic vulnerability.”
(Iranian Media, Al-Mayadeen, US Media, TPC)
