New York, Aug 15 (IANS) President Donald Trump has declared that the US will be taking over as its territory the Hormuz Strait, a key artery for petroleum and gas where his country’s almost half-year-long war with Iran has staunched global supplies.
“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,” he said on Friday.
Hormuz would be the third major international territory that Trump has laid claim to.
Hormuz has already become a virtual US territory, he claimed.
“Essentially, that’s what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to”, he said.
He asserted that the US was acting on behalf of the world in the Strait.
“What we’re doing is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves”, he said.
“No ship gets through, unless we want it to”, he said of the US blockade of Iran in the Strait.
On Wednesday, Trump had hinted at his plan to take over Hormuz, writing on Truth Social, “The USA has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT”!
Trump said on August 3 that the Strait would be “ open literally” the next day, but it is still virtually closed.
According to media reports, only nine ships had gone through on Friday as the virtual stalemate continues between the US and Iran – Washington using a blockade, while Tehran attacks ships, reportedly hitting two on Thursday.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi called Trump’s assertion of Hormuz takeover “fantasies”.
“This strait will be opened and closed only under Iran’s command, and so long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and stop indulging in fantasies, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade”, he said.
Trump’s speech at a police academy in a New York suburb on Long Island with his party’s candidate for the state’s governorship was delivered with the November mid-term election in focus.
The price rise, especially of petrol, has become a campaign point for the Democrats, who are making what they call the “affordability crisis” a central electoral theme.
Trump was unapologetic about the petrol price hikes sparked by the Iran War that he began on February 28 alongside Israel, and said it was the price Americans have to pay to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
“For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a — really, it’s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world — we don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon”, he told the crowd.
The average price of petrol in the US on Friday was $1.08 per litre, while the benchmark Brent crude oil roseto $88 a barrel, up about 5 per cent for the week.
The practicalities make Hormuz – 11,000 kilometres from Trump’s White House – a US territory moot.
The 170 kilometre-long Strait includes the territorial waters of Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, as well as international waterways.
To incorporate all of that into the US, he would need to get the agreements of Oman and the UAE, exercise a total disregard of international law, and militarily control the Iranian coastal waters.
Another practical issue is the reach and sustainability of US military power in the region.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the sole ship of that capability in the region, is already the under strain of an almost nine-month deployment that has taken a toll on the crew and the vessel.
Asked by reporters about the ship’s problems from the long deployment, he said it was “not nearly long enough”.
But he added, “It’s being replaced with another very similar ship”.
Trump has boasted of his ambitions for expanding US territory.
Soon after he began his second term as president, he threatened to take over Canada and make it the 51st state of the US, and taunted the then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling him “governor”.
After his proposals to buy Greenland from Denmark during his first term went nowhere, he threatened early this year to annex it.
–IANS
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