Trump Insists U.S. Should 'Run' the Strait of Hormuz and Get Paid For It

President Donald Trump said the U.S. should control the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passage through which around a fifth of global oil production typically flows, as renewed hostilities with Iran intensify.

“We are going to keep the Strait. We will probably run it,” Trump told Fox & Friends Monday during a phone interview. “We'll become the guardian of ⁠the Strait. Maybe we'll call it the ‘guardian angel’ of the Strait.” He added that the U.S. would ideally then be “reimbursed” for their guardianship of the waterway by “other" nations.

Soon after, Trump announced that the U.S. is reinstating its naval blockade against Iran and will charge 20% on all cargo shipped through the Strait to cover "any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the world." The President's remarks came as oil prices soared by more than 3% Monday morning after the U.S. and Iran traded further strikes over the weekend.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, neared $80 per barrel, a significant rise from the same time last week, when it traded at $71.99.

Although prices remain well below the $126 peak reached in April, during the height of the war, the surge reflects the concerns over shipments transiting the Strait, which has a threat level of “severe” due to high volatility in the area.

Stocks in Europe and Asia also fell at the start of the week, and Wall Street futures dipped amid the geopolitical tensions.

Later on Monday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that it had started launching a fresh wave of strikes against Iran that it said would continue to break down the country’s ability “to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The strikes came not long after Trump said during an afternoon interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” that the U.S. was “going to hit them very hard tonight, and we're going to hit them hard tomorrow, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it."

During the interview, Trump also said that the U.S. would “take out” Pickaxe Mountain, an underground site near Iran’s Natanz nuclear site that Iran has maintained is a centrifuge manufacturing facility but that analysts have suspected may be being built as a uranium enrichment site. The site is deeply buried beneath the ground—so deep that experts have said it could be out of the reach of the U.S.'s “bunker buster” bombs, which were previously used to severely damage the nuclear facility in Natanz. 

"We're going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ​ready," Trump said.

U.S. and Iran trade strikes amid tussle over Strait of Hormuz

The U.S. military on ​Saturday evening said it had begun "launching the third round of strikes this week against Iran" after Iranian forces "blatantly attacked" a Cyprus-flagged container ship transiting the Strait.

Late Sunday afternoon, U.S. forces launched additional strikes against Iran "to continue degrading their ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the Strait" after Tehran said it had disabled a second vessel, this time off the coast of Oman.

Iran retaliated by again targeting U.S. assets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman.

The hostilities continued into Monday, with Bahrain—home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet—reporting it had intercepted multiple Iranian missiles. Jordan also said it had intercepted missiles that entered its airspace from Iranian territories.

CENTCOM then on Monday afternoon said that it had begun “launching the third consecutive night of strikes against Iran,” which it asserted would keep “imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces” and degrading the country’s capacity to launch further attacks in the Strait.

Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, argued that Iran had not been the first to violate the peace agreement and insisted the country had “entered negotiations with meticulousness and seriousness.”

Tehran, over the weekend, reported it had closed the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran's IRGC later stating the only way to fully reopen the waterway was to “end the interventions of the aggressive U.S. military."

Trump has insisted the Strait is open, yet commercial traffic remains well below normal levels.

Ship-tracking data from Kpler, cited by Reuters, showed that only six vessels transited the Strait on Sunday. This is far lower than the 138 vessels that typically passed through the waterway each day prior to the war.