The United States has said it can maintain its naval blockade of Iran indefinitely and impose further economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks stall and global oil supplies shrink.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military had the capacity to maintain a naval presence in the region to enforce the blockade, which has caused severe economic damage to Iran.
“Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to,” Hegseth told reporters during a trip to Panama.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said Washington planned to inflict further financial damage on Iran.
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country,” he said in an interview on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” programme.
A tentative June agreement to end the war has fallen apart, while Iran has sought to pressure Washington by restricting access to the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has attacked some vessels attempting to pass through the strategic waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas travelled before the war began in February.
Two vessels belonging to the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company were attacked while transiting the strait on Thursday evening, the UAE state news agency WAM reported. The UAE government condemned the incident as an Iranian attack.
US President Donald Trump is facing domestic pressure to end the war, which has proved unpopular, while high fuel prices have affected his approval ratings and could threaten his party’s control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the US has “total control” over the strait, a claim Iran has rejected.
Tehran has said it will not allow the waterway to reopen until its conditions are met. These include the removal of economic sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets.
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to eight vessels on Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 12 and between 130 and 140 vessels before the war.
The US lifted its blockade of Iranian shipping and ports for a month in mid-June but later reimposed it. The move has cut off Tehran’s main source of hard currency and added to losses caused by wartime strikes on its energy infrastructure.
Washington had previously said it would lift the blockade once Iran and Oman, which sit on opposite sides of the strait, reached an agreement to restore commercial shipping.
Trump has also repeatedly threatened further military strikes and vowed to “hit Iran hard”. However, he has so far resisted deploying ground troops, seizing strategic islands or bombing desalination plants.
Earlier this week, Trump suggested he would rely on economic measures rather than military action.
The US has tightened economic sanctions against Iran and individuals and entities it says are helping Tehran procure weapons. However, the pressure campaign has failed to bring Iran back to the negotiating table.
The economic impact is also being felt globally.
The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that global oil supply was expected to fall by 4.3 million barrels per day, or about 4%, this year.
That is higher than the agency’s forecast of a 3.7 million-barrel-per-day decline made just a month earlier.
Oil prices fell by more than 2% on Thursday after a week of gains as investors focused on weaker global demand and a sharp increase in US crude inventories.
Reports that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis had targeted a Saudi Aramco refinery with drones, however, unsettled markets and renewed concerns about a wider regional war.
Global economists have warned that the war could cause a sharp slowdown in global growth and push some economies into recession if it continues.
Hegseth declined to comment when asked whether it had been a mistake to declare a ceasefire in April.
The move had ended high-tempo bombing of Iran in exchange for peace negotiations, which have since failed to resolve the conflict.
“I’m never going to comment on that. We’re doing exactly what we need to, to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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