Iran called on the US to accept defeat while President Donald Trump blasted Tehran as "very evil" and told Americans to brace for continued high fuel prices as a result of the war.
All these developments come as progress toward peace talks and oil tanker traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway remains halted, with no sign the warring parties were moving toward ending the conflict that the US and Israel launched on February 28, reported Reuters.
"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," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted on X early on Saturday.
Iran earlier today (August 15) rebuffed President Trump’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz would soon become US territory, as a ship in the crucial waterway was reportedly struck and negotiations with Tehran appeared no nearer to resuming.
“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said in a post on X late Friday. “The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech.”
Earlier, Trump had claimed that after the US defeats Iran, “pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”
Iran takes more aggressive military stance
Iran has reorganised its military to be more aggressive abroad as talks on ending the war with the US remain mired in stalemate, a sign that Tehran is preparing for a protracted era of regional conflict.
A raft of top military appointments by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei marks a shift to an “offensive doctrine,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who advises the force’s new commander, said in an interview on state TV late Tuesday.
Six veteran military and security figures have been given key positions across the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the IRGC Navy and the Basij, in changes that Iranian media and political figures have described as a reorganization of the country's security architecture, reported Iran International.
Mehr News Agency said the appointments did not represent the emergence of an entirely new generation at the top of the armed forces, but argued that the changes in commanders' roles and positions were significant.
According to media reports, a number of ships have come under attack in the Strait of Hormuz as talks to end the war in the Middle East remain stalled and the US readies new economic measures to force Iran to capitulate.
Only two vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Friday with no crude oil shipments visible, according to analysis from ship-tracking firm Kpler. Some ships may cross the strait undetected with their transponders off, but the figures are nowhere near the more than 130 ships that traversed it daily before the war, said the Reuters report.
Vessels that dare navigate the strait without Iranian permission risk missile or drone strikes.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations on Saturday said it had been notified of a projectile striking the hull of a bulk carrier. Two Abu Dhabi National Oil Company vessels were struck while transiting Hormuz on Thursday and another was hit on Friday evening, according to reports from the United Arab Emirates’ state-run WAM news agency. There were no reports of injuries.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran had not decided to resume talks with the US. He told Iranian news outlet Shahrara News in an interview published on Saturday that Washington must meet conditions on the strait in order for shipping to resume in the waterway that handled one-fifth of the world's oil before the war.
Meanwhile, Trump has urged Americans to accept slightly higher gasoline prices while the conflict with Iran continues.
He told a political rally in Garden City, New York, on Friday that paying "a tiny little bit more for your gasoline" is worth the cost of ensuring "a very evil country" could not have a nuclear weapon, one of the president's stated rationales for the war.
US reaching out to unlikely European players
With Iran calling off the crucial talks, a desperate Trump administration is expanding diplomatic efforts to unlikely European players.
Faced with an increasingly bellicose Iran as talks to end the war have stalled, US officials are reaching out to a broader swath of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran or ease its hardline position where traditional mediators have not succeeded so far, reported Associated Press.
While discussions between Iran and Oman, as well as between Iran and Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar, persist at an uneven and unpredictable pace, the US administration quietly has expanded its outreach to include perhaps unlikely interlocutors in Europe.
Just this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in person in Washington with the foreign minister of Austria on Tuesday and held a call with the foreign minister of Greece on Wednesday.
Those interactions were not notable beyond the normal course of relations between the US and two close European allies. The official State Department readouts of the discussions were bland and vague and did not mention Iran by name as a topic of conversation.
But it then emerged that both foreign ministers - almost immediately after their talks with Rubio - spoke Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, stated the report.
US readying economic isolation plan for Iran
Amidst the ongoing Hormuz crisis, Bloomberg has reported US will soon be announcing unprecedented economic measures against Iran, intensifying the Trump administration’s effort to force Tehran’s capitulation after almost six months of war.
"Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country," stated Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an interview with Newsmax.
The move will be part of a “one-two punch” that includes the continued blockade of Iran’s ports, he added.
In a trend that has sparked inflation and disappointed voters, the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline was about $4.08 on Friday, up 29% from a year earlier, according to the American Automobile Association.
Trump, a Republican, campaigned for reelection on a promise to lower energy costs, and Democrats are seeking to make the war's fallout an issue in November congressional elections, reported Reuters.
Crude oil futures rose $1 a barrel on Friday. Benchmark Brent futures were on track for a weekly rise of 6.0% and West Texas Intermediate 5.4%.
