Trump says US has 'total control' over Strait of Hormuz, calls naval blockade a 'wall of steel'

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said on Truth Social that the US has "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz and has no plans to relinquish it.

"The USA has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT!" Trump wrote, referring to the ongoing US naval blockade of Iranian ports as a "Wall of Steel" that Iran is powerless to counter.

Also read: Trump says US ‘owns’ Strait of Hormuz, threatens Iran with force


In the post, Trump claimed Iran's military has been left in ruins, saying the country "has no Navy" and "no Air Force," and that its remaining soldiers are going unpaid. He described the IRGC as "decimated and fleeing" and called Iran's leadership "uncertain, at best." On the economy, he claimed Iran was gripped by 300 per cent inflation and had "no money," dismissing the country as "all talk and no action."

Trump's post follows days of sharpening rhetoric from Tehran. On August 9, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said there was "no possibility of restarting negotiations" with Washington as long as the US continued to violate the June memorandum of understanding, and demanded compensation for what he called American "violations" of the deal.

A day earlier, Iran's parliament speaker and top negotiator had accused Trump of pursuing "theater diplomacy," as Washington and Tehran gave conflicting accounts of whether direct US-Iran talks over the strait were even taking place. Iran has separately renewed its own demand for war reparations from Washington, a claim Trump dismissed on Tuesday, saying he was "likewise demanding compensation from Iran."

Also read: Donald Trump turns Iran’s compensation demand back on Tehran, oil jumps 4%

On the ground, the US military said on Tuesday that it had fired on a vessel in the Gulf of Oman to enforce the blockade, underlining that enforcement action is continuing even as both sides trade claims over who controls the waterway.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and LNG trade passes, has been at the centre of the US-Iran war since fighting broke out on February 28, 2026. Iran shut the strait to foreign shipping in the war's opening days, with the IRGC later claiming "complete control" of the passage.

The US formally reimposed its own naval blockade of Iranian ports on April 13, after talks in Islamabad collapsed, aiming to choke off Iran's oil exports and force it back to the table.

Since then, both sides have repeatedly claimed to control the strait. US Central Command has said it has redirected dozens of commercial vessels and boarded or disabled several tankers attempting to breach the blockade, which Trump has branded the "Wall of Steel" while Iran has continued to insist that management of the strait "will never return to the way it was before the war."

According to official figures, Iran's own government has put annual inflation at 88.6 per cent, and the IMF estimates the country's economy has contracted by 5.4 per cent since the war began, both below the 300 per cent figure Trump cited in his post.