Iran's deputy foreign minister fired back at President Trump's declaration that the Strait of Hormuz will become U.S. territory, as a 60-day ceasefire between the two nations expires Monday with no talks scheduled.
Trump said Friday he would soon declare the strategic waterway, a narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the open ocean through which a massive share of global oil flows, a territory of the United States. The statement was the sharpest version yet of a position the president has staked out repeatedly: that the U.S. controls the strait and intends to formalize that control.
Iran answered within hours. The country's deputy foreign minister posted on X that the strait "cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech." Tehran also said no decision has been made on when diplomatic talks with Washington will resume, a pointed silence with the ceasefire clock running out.
On Saturday, Fox News chief correspondent Jonathan Hunt reported that U.S. Central Command had redirected more than 60 commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The American naval blockade remains in place, a physical fact on the water that backs up the president's words with warships and operational muscle.
The blockade has been a centerpiece of U.S. leverage throughout the conflict. The strait was effectively closed during the war, choking off global energy supplies and giving Washington enormous economic pressure over Tehran. That pressure has shaped every round of negotiations since the fighting began.
Trump has paired that military posture with an economic squeeze strategy designed to buckle Iran's economy without a full-scale ground campaign, a calculation that the regime's financial weakness would eventually force concessions at the table.
The current 60-day ceasefire grew out of a memorandum of understanding signed between Washington and Tehran in June. But it was only the latest in a series of temporary truces, each one shorter on trust than the last.
The cycle started in early April, when Trump announced a two-week ceasefire contingent on Iran's "complete, immediate, and safe opening" of the Strait of Hormuz. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif brokered that deal after mediating talks and requesting a two-week extension from Trump. Iran's foreign minister agreed to allow passage through the strait for two weeks under Iranian military management. Trump said at the time that "almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran," as National Review reported.
That optimism did not last. By late April, talks in Islamabad had failed to produce a permanent agreement. Trump told Bloomberg it was "highly unlikely" he would extend the ceasefire past Wednesday, April 23, with the core disputes, Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions, its funding of proxy groups, and the future of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, still unresolved, Just the News reported.
The White House then offered what it called "a little bit of flexibility." Press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on reports that any ceasefire extension would last only three to five days, saying the president had not set a firm deadline for receiving an Iranian proposal. "Ultimately, the timeline will be dictated by the commander-in-chief and the president of the United States," Leavitt told reporters.
Vice President JD Vance led a first round of peace talks that failed to produce a deal. Trump suggested a second round could happen within 36 to 72 hours. The pattern was consistent: American willingness to negotiate, Iranian delay, and a deadline that kept sliding.
The situation grew dangerous enough that Trump himself faced direct threats. Israeli intelligence revealed a fresh Iranian assassination plot targeting the president as ceasefire talks collapsed, underscoring the personal risk the commander-in-chief was absorbing while pressing for a deal.
By mid-June, Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif announced that the U.S. and Iran had reached a "final, agreed upon text" for a peace deal. "Peace has never been this close as it is now," Sharif said. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi echoed the sentiment, saying an agreement "has never been closer." The emerging deal covered Iran's nuclear program, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, phased sanctions relief, and the release of frozen Iranian assets, AP News reported. Pakistan, backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar, had been leading the mediation effort.
A key provision called for Iran to destroy or remove its highly enriched uranium, with technical details to be worked out during a 60-day period after signing. That 60-day window became the ceasefire now set to expire Monday.
And yet here we are. The technical details were not worked out. Iran has not said when talks will resume. The deputy foreign minister's response to Trump's territorial claim was defiant, not diplomatic. The trajectory points away from resolution, not toward it.
Trump's Friday statement went further than anything he had said before. Previous demands focused on reopening the strait, ending Iran's nuclear program, and cutting off proxy funding. Declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory is a fundamentally different proposition, one that would rewrite the map of the Middle East and challenge decades of international maritime law.
Whether the declaration is a negotiating tactic designed to extract maximum concessions or a genuine policy goal, it has already accomplished one thing: it forced Iran to respond publicly and put Tehran on the defensive. The deputy foreign minister's post on X was notable not just for its substance but for its tone, dismissive, but clearly rattled enough to warrant a direct reply.
Trump has warned Iran that the current round of talks represents its "last chance" as months of ceasefires have collapsed one after another. He has also rejected Iran's own ultimatums and countered with compensation demands, signaling that the administration views the balance of leverage as heavily favoring Washington.
With more than 60 commercial ships already rerouted and a naval blockade enforcing American control of the waterway in practice, the question is whether Monday's deadline triggers a return to open hostilities or another extension that buys time without buying peace.
Iran has spent months testing whether delay and defiance can outlast American resolve. Monday will tell Tehran, and the world, whether that bet still has any chips left on the table.
