President Donald Trump said the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy, and he said Iran should pay for the damage he says it has done over the past half century. That’s the language of empire, plain and ugly: a president claiming a chokepoint for global oil belongs to his war machine, while demanding money from a country already under blockade and sanctions.
Trump also said he is likewise demanding compensation from Iran after Tehran renewed its demand for war reparations, and he said he had instructed his representatives to put that firmly into any and all future negotiations. In a Truth Social post, Trump also demanded payment to the families of Iranian protesters who have been killed over the last 50 years. Asked about further action Monday evening, he told reporters, "You'll find out." He added, "If there's damages to be paid, I think Iran should pay those damages."
Who Holds the Chokepoint
Trump made the remarks Monday afternoon in the Oval Office and again Monday evening when reporters pressed him on what the U.S. would do next. He repeated his claim that the Hormuz strait, the major oil-shipping route that Iran has used to gain leverage in the war, is under U.S. control. The White House referred CNBC to Trump’s comments after Pakistan's defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said the U.S. and Iran remained close to "some sort of arrangement" over the Strait of Hormuz.
Asif told reporters that "things are shaping up again in favor of a peace arrangement or a deal." He said, "The signals in the last two to three days are that we are close to some sort of an arrangement," without giving further details. A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera that talks between Iran and Oman about opening a shipping channel through the Strait of Hormuz were at a "critical juncture." The language of diplomacy hangs over a route already squeezed by force.
CNBC reported that U.S. forces early Tuesday morning fired on a Panama-flagged vessel that tried to bypass the blockade, citing The Wall Street Journal. U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on that report. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre said Tuesday morning it received a report of an incident involving a tanker and military forces in the Gulf of Oman, near the Strait of Hormuz, and advised vessels to consider the latest maritime security information and maintain awareness of the evolving operational environment. It said authorities were aware and relevant investigations remained ongoing.
What Iran Says It Wants
Iran's Supreme National Security Council secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, said Saturday the strait won't reopen until Washington lifts its naval blockade and sanctions, withdraws American forces from the region, pays war reparations, and releases frozen Iranian assets. The council also called for an end to U.S. attacks on Iran's regional allies. That’s the price of reopening a route the world depends on: not a market decision, but a standoff between a blockade and the people trapped beneath it.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, responded to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's claims that U.S. sanctions were "suffocating" Iran by saying Washington opts for sanctions whenever diplomacy fails and escalates them when they don't work, a pattern he said has become less a "policy" than a "compulsive addiction." The phrase lands because the machinery keeps grinding, no matter how many lives it crushes.
NPR reported that Trump is betting another financial squeeze can bring an end to the war with Iran after 50 years of economic pressure failed to stop its nuclear weapons ambitions. The Trump administration is hoping that months of bombing have pushed Iran's economy to a breaking point that will force its leadership to cave to demands to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers. NPR said the administration has since April 16 been engaged in what it calls "Operation Economic Fury" against Iran, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called that component the "financial equivalent" of a bombing campaign as countries that buy oil from Iran or bank with it could be sanctioned.
Trump said Iran is "broke, totally broke" and said, "They have no money. You know, Iran is broke, totally broke. And, they're not paying their soldiers. They have inflation of 300%." NPR said inflation is running high in Iran, though Trump's estimates were higher than what administration officials had been citing to reporters. NPR also reported that the International Monetary Fund estimated the overall economy shrinks by 5.4% and that the Iranian government recently reported an annual inflation rate of 88.6%. The U.S. Treasury Department said average loadings of Iranian oil have decreased from 1.8 million barrels per day before the war to less than 500,000 barrels per day over the past month.
The Cost of Pressure
NPR said the war largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, which had handled roughly 20% of global oil supplies before the conflict, and that attempts to reopen the strait have been short-lived as it has become a source of leverage for the Iranians in negotiations. Crude oil prices climbed on Monday as investors interpreted Trump's comments as a sign that fewer ships would be traversing the strait, limiting global supplies of gasoline, jet fuel, natural gas and other forms of energy. The U.S. economy has continued to grow, but inflation is elevated and borrowing costs have risen in ways that have hurt Trump's popularity and led to disapproval of the Iran war.
Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University who helped direct Iran sanctions strategy in the Obama administration, said sanctions are unable to bite as quickly as the impact of the largely shuttered strait. He said the value of sanctions as a tool is limited because Trump has not articulated clear strategic goals for the war, at times stressing that it can't have a nuclear weapon, then emphasizing the strait and then talking about ballistic missiles. Nephew said, "Economic pressure is a possible element in his strategy, but he's yet to explain the purpose." He added, "Trump has systematically weakened his own hand through his inadequate use of force, inarticulate elucidation of an objective, and vacillation on negotiations."
Juan Zarate, a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, said the sanctions and the ongoing U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports give the U.S. economic and financial leverage, and that sanctions threatening third-party countries doing business with Iran also have an impact, though they take time. Zarate said, "The ultimate question will be how far the United States is willing to go to constrict Iran's oil trade and threaten third countries with severe sanctions -- and whether it has the patience to test whether the economic pain will change the regime's behavior."
Trump has long derided past presidents who used sanctions to limit Iran's economic ability to pay for its military and nuclear development. In a speech last week in Las Vegas, he defended the bombing, missiles and drone attacks that began on Feb. 28 by saying sanctions from previous administrations dating back to November 1979 had failed. He said, "It's been 47 years, but really, it's been 50 years because they've been saying 47 for three years, it's been 50 years. And no other president has done what you should have done a long time ago, because Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, can't have it."
A senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously to discuss strategy, said the U.S. military has set back Iran's ability to produce, sell and ship oil and other energy resources. The official said the administration sees the naval blockade of the strait and sanctions as effective and views Trump as having additional options that can be cranked harder in the weeks and months ahead. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday in a joint appearance with Bessent, "It's not just what the military can do — we've got the most powerful economy in the world as well," and added, "And when you've got a motivated treasury secretary who can pull a lot of levers because he knows how to do it, you can put a lot of pressure on adversaries."