The United States said Thursday it could sustain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely while stepping up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks stall, global oil supplies tighten and tensions across the region escalate.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military has the capacity to sustain a naval presence in the region to enforce the blockade, which has already inflicted severe economic damage on Iran.
“The United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that indefinitely because we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to,” Hegseth told reporters during a trip to Panama.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately said Thursday that Washington planned to further increase financial pressure on Iran as part of its broader effort to weaken Tehran’s economy.
“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,” he said in an interview on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” program.
With a tentative June deal to end the war in tatters, Iran has sought to exert leverage on Washington by controlling the Strait of Hormuz.
It has attacked some vessels attempting to transit the strategic waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas traveled before the war began in February.
Two vessels operated by state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. were attacked while transiting the strait Thursday evening, the UAE state news agency WAM reported. The United Arab Emirates government condemned the incident as an Iranian attack.
U.S. President Donald Trump is under pressure at home to end a war that is deeply unpopular, with high fuel prices weighing on his approval ratings and potentially eroding his party’s control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has repeatedly asserted that the U.S. has “total control” over the strait, prompting Iranian denials. Tehran has said it will not allow the waterway to reopen until its conditions are met, including the removal of economic sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets.
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to eight vessels Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 12 vessels and 130 to 140 ships before the war.
The U.S. lifted its blockade of Iran’s shipping and ports for a month in mid-June but has since reimposed it, cutting off Tehran’s primary source of hard currency and compounding earlier losses from wartime strikes on its energy infrastructure.
Washington previously said it would lift the blockade once Iran and Oman, which sit on either side of the strait, reach an agreement to restore commercial shipping.
Trump has also repeatedly threatened to escalate military strikes and “hit Iran hard,” although he has so far resisted deploying ground troops, seizing strategic islands or bombing desalination plants. Earlier this week, Trump suggested he would rely on economic means rather than military action.
The U.S. has tightened economic sanctions against Iran and other individuals and entities that it says are helping Tehran procure weapons, but the pressure campaign has failed to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table.
Stress is mounting on the global economy. The International Energy Agency on Wednesday forecast that global oil supply would fall by 4.3 million barrels per day, or about 4%, this year.
Just a month ago, the agency had forecast a decline of 3.7 million barrels per day.
Oil prices settled more than 2% lower Thursday after a week of gains as investors focused on signs of weaker global demand and a sharp increase in U.S. crude inventories.
But reports that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis had targeted a Saudi Aramco refinery with drones unsettled the market, renewing concerns about a widening regional war.
Global economists have forecast a sharp drop in global growth as a result of the war and potentially a swing into recession in some areas, warning that the impact will grow if the war is not ended soon.
Hegseth declined to comment when asked whether, in retrospect, it was a mistake to declare a ceasefire in April, a move that ended high-tempo bombing of Iran in exchange for peace negotiations that have failed to resolve the conflict.
“I’m never going to comment on that. We’re doing exactly what we need to, to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said.
