US Press
Iran rejects Trump's claim that Hormuz can become American territory
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Donald Trump told an audience in New York this week that he could declare the Strait of Hormuz territory of the United States. Tehran answered on Saturday.
The Hill reported that Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, dismissed the assertion in a post on the social platform X, saying the opening and closing of the waterway remains a matter for Iran. The Washington outlet described the exchange as the sharpest yet over a strait that neither government controls outright.
The same day, the newspaper reported, the United Arab Emirates accused Iran of striking another vessel belonging to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as it transited Hormuz on Friday — the third such attack in less than a week. Iran has not confirmed the Emirati account.
The file that is eating the calendar#
For Palestinian readers the strait is not a distant story. Washington's Middle East attention is finite, and it is being spent on a waterway two thousand kilometres from Gaza while the ceasefire's second phase sits unimplemented.
Jared Kushner is due in Israel and Egypt next week with Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's high representative, to work on the differences over the Gaza roadmap. Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the fifteen-point plan that would have Hamas hand its weapons to a Palestinian governing committee, and has said there will be no withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.
Every week the Hormuz file escalates is a week in which the American pressure that the roadmap depends on is pointed somewhere else. The tankers are counted in Abu Dhabi; the cost of the delay is counted in Gaza.
