Tehran rejects Trump's claim over Hormuz

TEHRAN — Iran on Saturday fired back at US President Donald Trump's claim that he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz part of US territory, saying the crucial waterway "will remain Iranian".

Trump has repeatedly insisted that the strait is under the United States' control despite traffic remaining throttled.

"The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on X. "This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran's command."

Trump told a political rally in New York state on Friday that after the US defeats Iran, "pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States".

"It's true," he added.

An unnamed White House official later clarified that Trump was joking, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Earlier this month, a top Iranian official set out a list of conditions for reopening the strait, including an end to the "war and aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq".

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, chief of the Supreme National Security Council, also demanded an end to the crippling sanctions, the release of frozen assets and compensation for wartime damage.

As diplomacy stalls between the US and Iran, attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have continued, highlighting the risks to regional shipping.

The United Arab Emirates' state-owned oil company ADNOC said on Saturday that one of its vessels came under attack the night before.

The country's foreign ministry later blamed Tehran, and said that Iran's Revolutionary Guards were engaged in "acts of piracy" in the strait.

On Friday, the Gulf nation blamed Iran for other attacks on two vessels linked to ADNOC as they passed through the waterway.

Before the war, the strait carried around one-fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas exports, and prices have repeatedly surged since the dispute over the waterway erupted, piling economic and political pressure on Washington.

The closure of the strait has driven up prices for US voters, creating a political headache for Trump as November's midterm elections near.

At the Friday rally, Trump said paying "a tiny little bit more for your gasoline" is worth the cost of ensuring "a very evil country" could not have a nuclear weapon, one of his stated rationales for the war.

In a trend that has sparked inflation and disappointed voters, the average US price of a gallon of gasoline was about $4.08 on Friday ($1.08 per liter), up 29 percent from a year earlier, according to the American Automobile Association.

US Vice-President JD Vance said last week that Washington's top priority during the Iran war was to keep the energy prices low for US consumers, while preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon ranked second.

Tehran signaled last week that it had agreed with Oman on a route for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz and was finalizing arrangements to jointly manage the waterway.

Situation in Lebanon

In another development, an Israeli airstrike killed a senior commander in Hezbollah's Badr regional division in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Sunday.

Lebanese media reported that at least four people were killed in the attack.

The Israeli military said that Abu Hassan Alaa was killed late on Saturday in the strike on Deir al-Zahrani. It described the attack as a response to an earlier Hezbollah drone strike targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon that wounded three soldiers.

Lebanon's National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes struck a two-story building, killing at least four people and wounding five.

Also on Saturday, seven people were killed in heavy Israeli airstrikes in the southern village of Ansar, one of the deadliest attacks since a ceasefire was reached in 2024.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,300 people in Lebanon since the latest round of fighting began on March 2.

AGENCIES-XINHUA