Hormuz: Trump’s territorial bravado and Iran defiance

Azad Mirza

Nearly six months into the US-Israel war on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz has become less a shipping lane than a rhetorical battlefield. This week that theatre reached a new pitch: Donald Trump posted an AI-generated map on Truth Social labelling the waterway “NEW US Territory,” insisting the strait is “open and operating” and that “all water mines have been removed or detonated.”

Tehran’s response was blunt mockery – Iranian officials suggested that, by the same logic, they could just as well declare California Iranian territory, while parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told lawmakers the strait will stay shut until Washington lifts its naval blockade of Iranian ports, lifts oil sanctions, releases frozen Iranian assets and halts military operations on every front. The two statements cannot both be true, and that gap between claim and reality is now the central fact of the crisis.

Trump’s territorial framing is best read as psychological and political theatre rather than an operational claim – there is no serious suggestion the US intends to annex or physically administer the strait, and even his own officials speak instead of a naval blockade enforcing safe passage.

But the posturing matters strategically: by insisting the strait is already open under an American security umbrella, Trump denies Iran the leverage of being seen to control the closure, while simultaneously setting up any future disruption as an Iranian “provocation” against US-declared territory, rather than a continuation of a war Iran did not start.

Iran’s position is comparatively coherent, if maximalist: Tehran has conditioned reopening on a reciprocal, verifiable rollback of American pressure – port blockade, sanctions, frozen assets and hostilities – not merely a diplomatic gesture. A senior Iranian official’s disclosure that Tehran is shifting to a “fully offensive” posture, alongside a reported Iranian strike on a vessel in the strait this week, suggests Iran is not preparing to fold but to raise costs.

Meanwhile, Iran has been separately negotiating with Oman over a managed shipping corridor through the strait – a technical workaround that could restore some traffic without Iran conceding anything to Washington.

Trump’s threat to “bomb the s*** out of” Oman if it “gets in the way” of that arrangement reveals the actual anxiety beneath the territorial bluster: Washington fears losing control of the narrative on reopening more than it fears the strait itself remaining shut.

Taken together, the two sides are not converging toward a deal; they are each trying to define reopening on their own terms, which makes an early, negotiated resumption of normal traffic unlikely in the near term.

The bravado abroad is unfolding against a grim political backdrop at home. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week put Trump’s approval rating at 33%, the lowest of his current presidency and tied with the nadir of his first term. Sixty-four per cent disapprove, and roughly four in five Americans believe the Iran conflict will drag on rather than resolve soon.

The war that Trump promised would take “a few weeks” has instead pushed gasoline prices up sharply, and with November’s midterms approaching, Republican strategists are visibly nervous about a conflict that has become a drag on both the economy and the party’s congressional prospects.

This is the context that makes the “new US territory” messaging legible: it is aimed less at Tehran than at an American audience anxious for a win, a way of declaring victory over a strait Washington cannot actually reopen through statements alone.

The most probable path out of the impasse is incremental and messy rather than a single grand bargain: a partial, Oman-brokered shipping corridor that lets some tanker traffic resume under negotiated safe-passage arrangements, even as Iran and the US continue trading rhetorical fire and the underlying memorandum of understanding – declared “over” by Trump in July and “suspended” by Iran soon after – remains dead in all but name.

A comprehensive reopening requires either a battlefield or economic shift dramatic enough to force one side to blink, or a face-saving formula that lets Trump claim credit for “reopening” a strait he insists was never really closed, while Iran claims its core sanctions-and-blockade demands were substantively met.

Until then, the direct cost is measured in oil markets: prices have already climbed to three-week highs on Iran’s “offensive posture” signal, and the strait’s roughly one-fifth to one-third share of global seaborne oil and LNG flows means every escalation ripples through global energy prices, shipping insurance premiums and inflation readings worldwide.

Strategically, the standoff is reshaping the Gulf’s security architecture: Gulf states like Oman and Qatar are being pulled, often unwillingly, into direct brokering roles between Washington and Tehran, a shift that dilutes traditional US primacy in the region and elevates smaller Gulf actors as indispensable intermediaries – even as they risk becoming targets of American threats, as Oman has now experienced twice.

For India, the world’s third-largest oil importer and a country reliant on imports for close to 88% of its crude needs, the stakes are direct rather than abstract.

At the disruption’s peak, Hormuz-transiting cargo accounted for roughly 40–50% of India’s crude imports and the bulk of its LNG and LPG supplies; New Delhi responded by diversifying sourcing to more than 40 countries, pushing non-Hormuz supply from about 55% to 70% of imports within weeks, deploying naval escorts under Operation Urja Suraksha, and briefly resuming Iranian crude purchases under sanctions relief windows.

That resilience has softened the blow, but it has not eliminated it: renewed closure risk this week reintroduces exactly the price volatility, freight-insurance costs, and inflationary pass-through that Indian refiners and households absorbed earlier this year.

A prolonged, unresolved Hormuz standoff keeps India locked into costlier, more circuitous sourcing, complicates its careful non-alignment between Washington and Tehran, and underscores why New Delhi has consistently pushed for de-escalation. (IPA Service)