For the same narrow stretch of water, two governments now claim the same thing: total control. Washington says the United States owns the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran says the strait was never America’s to own. Both statements cannot be true. Both are being made anyway.
President Donald Trump started it on Wednesday on Truth Social, writing that the United States has total control over the Strait of Hormuz and will keep it. He described the American naval blockade as a wall of steel and said Iran could do nothing to stop it. The night before, at Joint Base Andrews, he told reporters the same thing in plainer words: the United States owns it. Then came the warning: at some point Iran might do something, and then it would be blown away.
Iran answered on Thursday. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesman of the country’s central military command, told state television that the American claims were lies and fabrications. In his account, the Strait of Hormuz was, as in the past, under the complete management and control of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and no commercial ship or tanker without the permission and supervision of the powerful Iranian armed forces had had, or would have, the possibility of safe passage through it.
Both claims rest on the same fact: the strait carries about a fifth of the oil the world burns, and whoever truly controls it holds a hand on the global economy. That is why the claims are made at all.
The two versions of control are not the same kind of thing. Iran’s claim is a business arrangement. Since the war between the United States, Israel and Iran began on February 28, Tehran has run the waterway like a toll road. Vessels ask permission and pay transit fees. Ships belonging to Israel are barred in war or peacetime, and American warships are barred too. Iran has said this openly on state television, and ships have complied, because the alternative is a missile.
The American claim is a military one. A naval blockade stands at the mouth of the strait. The Trump administration is betting on economic pressure rather than a wider escalation, as The Hindu’s live coverage of the war reported. The blockade is that pressure: it strangles Iranian oil exports without a ground war.
The gap between the two claims is the truth. Neither side fully controls the strait, and both know it. Iran has kept up intermittent attacks on shipping, its way of proving the Americans do not own the water. The Americans cannot stop the fees from being collected. Former diplomat Richard Haass put it plainly: no one was in total control of the Strait of Hormuz.
There are negotiations underneath the rhetoric. Tehran and Muscat are discussing an alternate corridor through the waterway, though Iran says a new route alone would not open the strait unless the United States meets its demands. The talks have not produced anything yet. They are the diplomatic version of the same contest: everyone wants the oil to move, and nobody wants to admit who is in charge.
So the war of words continues. Trump posts, Tehran broadcasts, the tankers pass, the fees are paid. The claims are cheap. The strait is not. Both sides know that a real closure means a real war, which is why they fight with statements instead. The result is a strange equilibrium: two governments telling their publics they are the masters of the same water, and a truth that sits in the middle of the channel, with no flag and no owner.
Sources: The Hindu, Reuters, Bloomberg, Asharq Al-Awsat, The Hill