There are indications that President Donald Trump is willing to end the war with Iran even without waiting for the vital Strait of Hormuz to be opened. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the US President has told aides he’s willing to end the military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date. In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks.
He decided that the US should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.
Earlier, the BBC had reported that Trump had lashed out at the UK and other countries, telling them to “go get your own oil” from the Strait of Hormuz. “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he wrote in a Truth Social post yesterday. Trump’s anger is as a result of the UK and others reluctant to join in the war which he unilaterally launched with Israel on February 28.
As a result of the attack, Iran has virtually clamped down on shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil passes, consequently driving energy prices up. In the US the price of fuel has hit $4 a gallon – the highest in three, prompting many to blame their president for the spike. Also yesterday, Iran stepped up its blockade of the vital strait by setting ablaze a fully loaded oil tanker off Dubai.
Meanwhile, speaking yesterday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the next few days in the war against Iran would be decisive and warned Tehran that the conflict would intensify if it did not make a deal. This prompted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to hit back with a new threat, saying that they will target UScompanies in the region in retaliation for attacks on Iran from today, listing 18 groups including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla and Boeing.
Hegseth, who said he visited US troops in the Middle East on Saturday, said Trump was willing to make a deal and talks were ongoing and gaining strength, but that the US was prepared to continue the war if Iran did not comply, reports Reuters. “We have more and more options, and they have less … in only one month we set the terms, the upcoming days will be decisive,” Hegseth said in Washington. “Iran knows that, and there’s almost nothing they can militarily do about it.”
The month-long conflict has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin. Crude oil prices briefly spiked again after the attack on the tanker, which can carry around 2 million barrels of oil worth more than $200 million at current prices. Higher oil and fuel prices have also started to weigh on US household finances and are a political headache for Trump and his Republican Party before November midterm elections. Tight global supplies pushed Brent crude futures up 5.5% to $119 per barrel, on course for a record monthly gain of 64%.
