President Donald Trump used his Truth Social account on Tuesday to publish a graphic branding the Strait of Hormuz as "NEW U.S. Territory," a claim landing as the standoff between Washington and Tehran approaches its sixth month. The image places a star-spangled banner over a map of the waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, with its narrowest point circled beneath the label.
From Campaign Rhetoric to an Official Post
The claim didn't come out of nowhere. Four days earlier, addressing a crowd made up largely of Nassau County police officers at a training center in Garden City, New York, Trump told the audience that once Iran's defeat was "complete," he would declare Hormuz "a territory of the United States." He pointed to the ongoing U.S. naval blockade as evidence Washington already effectively ran the passage, telling the crowd, "Essentially, that's what it is. We have the blockade."
By Monday, in the Oval Office, the president pushed the idea further. Asked to elaborate, Trump called a Hormuz takeover "a great idea," arguing that the blockade alone amounted to control, while acknowledging Iran could still resort to sabotage such as laying mines. Monday also marked the deadline for a 60-day U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding, signed in June, that had been meant to produce a broader peace deal — a deadline that passed without a resolution.
Tehran's Two-Part Rebuttal
Iran's pushback actually came in two separate rounds, on two different days, responding to two different Trump statements.
The first came after the Friday speech in New York. Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, wrote on X that the waterway "has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian," adding that it would open or close only under Tehran's command, Al Jazeera reported.
The second round followed Tuesday's graphic directly. Gharibabadi again took to X, this time accusing Trump of clinging to a "delusion" about the strait in the same way he'd insisted on renaming the Persian Gulf. About two hours later, Trump posted again, insisting the strait was "open and operating" and that its mines had been "removed or detonated" — a description Iranian officials dispute, given Tehran's continued insistence that it alone controls passage through the waterway.
Why the Claim Carries No Legal Weight
Maritime-law specialists broadly agree on one point: a social media post cannot redraw a border. Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, has argued that annexing territory legally requires a treaty ratified by the Senate or an act of Congress — the same route historically used for Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Louisiana Purchase — not a unilateral post. Fein has gone further, suggesting a genuine annexation attempt could amount to a violation of international law.
A maritime-law professor at City, University of London made a similar point to CNN, stressing that "claiming territory by a presidential declaration or decree is not enough", and that constitutional requirements would have to be cleared first.
Geography compounds the legal problem. The strait's territorial waters belong to Iran and Oman under the law of the sea, even as international rules guarantee foreign vessels the right of passage through it. A Georgetown University in Qatar scholar told Al Jazeera that the remarks are aimed more at Trump's domestic base than at any real redrawing of the map, describing the president as a showman whose words should be taken seriously but not always literally.
A Waterway Already Under Strain
The declaration lands amid a genuine crisis in the strait, a corridor that, before the war, typically carried somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the world's seaborne oil, along with roughly a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas. Shipping has thinned sharply since: weekly crossings fell nearly 20 percent last week alone, according to maritime trackers MarineTraffic and Kpler, as tankers avoid the passage and oil prices edge higher.
The standoff traces back to February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran and Tehran responded by effectively sealing the strait. A brief ceasefire in April collapsed within days, prompting Washington to impose its own naval blockade on Iranian ports — a blockade that has been lifted and reinstated more than once in the months since, most recently after the June memorandum's terms broke down in July.
Oman Pulled Into the Standoff
The territorial claim surfaced alongside a separate flashpoint: Trump's threat, made in a Monday interview with Fox News, to strike Oman if it "gets in the way" of reopening the strait — a warning aimed at Muscat's role mediating between Washington and Tehran. Oman's foreign ministry had said only hours earlier that it had reached an understanding with Iran on future shipping routes through the waterway.
That threat prompted Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia to announce he'll introduce a War Powers Resolution specifically barring military action against Oman once the Senate returns from its August recess, calling the president "power-drunk" in a statement accompanying the announcement.
What the Claim Signals Going Forward
Taken together, analysts describe the "NEW U.S. Territory" graphic as a pressure tactic rather than a legal instrument — an attempt to project dominance over Iran and reassure a domestic audience unsettled by falling shipping volumes and rising gas prices, without triggering the formal annexation process Congress would actually need to approve. Whether the rhetoric hardens into further military action, or eases as Oman's mediation with Tehran continues, will shape the strait's real-world status far more than any single post ever could.
