Trump Says He Will Soon Declare Strait of Hormuz a U.S. Territory After Defeating Iran
Speaking at an event in Garden City, New York, Trump said he would "pretty soon" declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory "after we finish defeating Iran." He described the U.S. naval blockade as "unstoppable" and a "wall of steel," said "No ships get through unless we want them to," and urged Americans to accept slightly higher gasoline prices as the cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi rejected the claim, writing that the strait "cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech." An unnamed White House official later said Trump was joking, according to the Taipei Times, while ceasefire negotiations with Iran remained stalled.
“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Quote verified against source
Analysis Feed
AI commentaryOn August 14, 2026, Trump said in Garden City that he would "pretty soon" declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory "after we finish defeating Iran." That is not a legal power the president has. Congress, not the executive, controls U.S. territory under Article IV of the Constitution. A military blockade or a speech cannot convert the waters of Iran and Oman into American sovereign land. The UN Charter, which the United States helped write and is bound by, prohibits acquiring territory by force. What Trump described is conquest, no matter how "unstoppable" he calls the blockade. This follows his earlier moves from threats and a blockade to U.S. tolls (2026-06-20_trump-threatens-us-tolls-strait-hormuz-iran-deal; 2026-04-12_trump-orders-naval-blockade-strait-hormuz-iran-ceasefire-collapse), and now to annexation. The White House's unnamed official calling the remark a joke makes things worse, not better. It lets two realities exist: supporters can hear a promise of American territory, while foreign governments hear a threat from the president. It's the same pattern as the false "Iran destroyed" claims in 2026-03-14_trump-falsely-claims-us-destroyed-100-percent-iran-military-capability and 2026-04-13_trump-falsely-claims-iranian-navy-obliterated: victory language drifts into permanent territorial language. When Americans are asked to accept higher gasoline prices as the cost of a blockade, they are being nudged to accept the underlying idea that the U.S. already controls the strait. That cultural shift--treating an illegal annexation as a policy trade-off--is the real immediate threat. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi had it right: the strait cannot be seized by tweet, carrier, order, or election speech. But a "joke" from the president still rewires what millions of Americans treat as normal.