The United States on Thursday threatened to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, ratcheting up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered, global oil supply is dropping and regional tensions are rising.
Two vessels from the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company were attacked transiting the strait on Thursday evening, UAE state news agency WAM reported. The United Arab Emirates government condemned it as an Iranian attack. The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted. Those include removing economic sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets. The Republican president is under pressure at home to end a war that is deeply unpopular, with high fuel prices dragging down his approval ratings and potentially eroding his party’s control of Congress in midterm elections in November.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that the US has “total control” over the strait. Iran said in an X post that those claims “do not change the reality. Washington previously said it would lift the Iranian blockade once Iran and Oman, which sit on either side of the strait, reach an agreement to restore commercial shipping.
