Donald Trump has been told to “accept defeat” in the Middle East as senior Iranian officials issue a barrage of defiant statements.
The conflict over the Strait of Hormuz has been ongoing for nearly six months.
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Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, wrote on X: “The strait will be closed and opened only under Iran’s command, and as long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and cease indulging in fantasies, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade.
“Once and for all, accept the reality: Up to this point, you have suffered strategic and heavy defeats; the Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, and will remain Iranian.”
The country’s judiciary chief, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, branded Mr Trump a “fully fledged loser in the hard arena of politics and military combat”.
He insisted that “what multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers could not achieve will not be achieved with a few tweets and speeches.”
Speaking at a political rally in New York, President Trump struck back.
He said: “After we finish defeating Iran … pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”
The prospect of diplomatic progress appears remote.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed that Tehran will not return to the negotiating table unless Washington first meets a series of demands.
These include the payment of an estimated $270billion (£200billion) in war reparations, an end to the US naval blockade, the lifting of economic sanctions, a full withdrawal of American forces from the region, and the release of frozen Iranian assets.
Mr Trump has countered with his own conditions, insisting that Iran compensate the US for the deaths of American soldiers and warning that he would impose an “indefinite” naval blockade of the strait.
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The economic toll of the conflict is mounting on both sides.
American consumers are contending with elevated fuel costs, while Iranian families face spiralling inflation, making basic necessities such as bread and cooking oil increasingly unaffordable.
Mr Trump urged Americans to tolerate paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline”, arguing it was a price worth paying to prevent “a very evil country” from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The conflict has also seen major disruption to global shipping.
On Friday, just two vessels made the passage, with no crude oil cargoes among them, according to data from the ship-tracking firm Kpler.
Prior to the conflict, more than 130 ships transited the waterway daily.
The comments come after bombshell details emerged about Mr Trump’s extraordinary getaway from an alleged Iranian threat to his life.
It emerged Mr Trump was smuggled away in a catering vehicle onto a waiting plane following last month’s Nato summit in Turkey.
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