President Donald Trump said Sunday morning that in response to the breakdown in talks between the U.S. and Iran, he would soon order his own blockade on all ships trying to enter or exit the Strait of Hormuz.
Reopening the waterway was a key U.S. demand in the two-week ceasefire agreement Trump announced last week. The future of that deal remains unclear.
“At some point, we will reach an ‘ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT’ basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, ‘There may be a mine out there somewhere,’ that nobody knows about but them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.”
Trump also said he would order the U.S. Navy to begin interdicting any vessels that have paid a toll to Iran for safe passage through the narrow waterway, which plays a crucial role in the global shipping industry and which close to one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through. The president claimed that “other countries” would assist with the blockade, but did not offer further details.
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“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. military was standing by to “finish up the little that is left of Iran!”
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the conflict began in late February, resulting in a sharp increase in the price of oil that has sent global energy prices soaring and led to a steep drop in Trump’s poll numbers. The decision to blockade the strait further will likely lead to additional increases in the price of energy that will ripple across the global economy.
The threats follow a whirlwind weekend of diplomacy in Islamabad, Pakistan, where representatives for the U.S. and Iran met face-to-face for the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The talks lasted for more than 20 hours and continued until early Sunday local time.
Vice President JD Vance, who was leading the U.S. delegation in negotiations, announced Saturday night that the two sides had failed to come to an agreement and that they were still far apart on several issues.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament who led the country’s delegation, attributed the breakdown to the Americans’ inability “to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of talks.”
In a lengthy second post on Truth Social on Sunday morning, Trump detailed the negotiations and gave just one reason for why they fizzled out.
“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump wrote.
When asked if by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning whether he would resume attacks on Iran if the country did not agree to ends its nuclear enrichment program, Trump replied: “Yeah, I will. If they don’t give that plan up, yeah.”
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