President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States will assume the role of “the guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz, outlining his vision for America’s involvement in the strategic waterway as tensions between Washington and Tehran escalated following a weekend exchange of military strikes.
During a phone interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said the United States should oversee security in the Strait of Hormuz while suggesting allied nations should help cover the cost of those efforts.
“We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Trump said.
The president expanded on that idea by describing the role he believes the United States should play in protecting one of the world’s most important maritime corridors.
“We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll become the guardian angel of the strait, and we should be reimbursed for that,” Trump said. “When we do that we’re going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy, they’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing unlike we had for many years.”
Trump also argued that the United States has spent decades protecting the waterway without receiving compensation.
“We guarded the strait for 50 years, and we never got paid for it,” he said. “We guarded it for nothing.”
The president’s remarks came after U.S. Central Command announced Sunday that American forces had carried out another round of military operations targeting Iran.
According to Centcom, U.S. forces “completed a new wave of offensive strikes against Iran” and hit “dozens of targets at multiple locations with precision munitions to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international shipping flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.”
The military said the operation was intended to reduce Iran’s ability to threaten commercial vessels traveling through the strategic passage.
Centcom also reiterated the U.S. position regarding the status of the waterway.
“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade. Iran does not control it,” the command said in a statement.
The military added that U.S. forces remain positioned to ensure commercial vessels can continue using the strait despite what it described as Iran’s “continued unwarranted aggression, harassment, threats, and arbitrary declarations.”
Iran quickly rejected that position.
According to The Associated Press, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by declaring, “The Strait of Hormuz is our territory, and we will not allow a rogue and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference in it.”
The competing statements highlighted the sharply different positions taken by Washington and Tehran over the strategic waterway following the latest military confrontation.
The dispute over control of the Strait of Hormuz intensified after the United States launched a third round of strikes against Iran.
Those operations were carried out in response to an Iranian attack on a container ship traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump’s comments on Monday reflected his view that the United States should continue playing a central role in protecting navigation through the corridor while seeking reimbursement from allied nations for providing that security.
The Strait of Hormuz remains a key route for international shipping, and the latest exchange of strikes between the United States and Iran has renewed attention on the strategic importance of the waterway as both sides continue to assert competing claims over its control.
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