TEHRAN, Aug. 13– Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), the body responsible for maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, has rejected claims by U.S. officials that the waterway is open.
“Claims and repeated posts by U.S. officials that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer blocked do not change the reality,” the PGSA said in a social media post on X on Wednesday. “The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted,” it said.
The PGSA’s remarks came after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed earlier Wednesday that the United States maintains “total control” of the strait and will “keep it.” In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the U.S. naval blockade of the waterway had been described as a “wall of steel” and Iran lacked the capability to challenge it.
Earlier, Mohsen Rezaei, the newly-appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed unless the United States changes its behavior and accepts Iran’s conditions, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.
“The United States must end the war and pay the country’s frozen assets, and the war must end in the entire region, including Lebanon and Gaza,” Rezaei said. He added that Iran’s other conditions had been conveyed to the United States through mediators.
Rezaei also referred to ongoing negotiations between Iran and Oman over the designation of a new route through the strait, saying a potential agreement between the two countries “will be an issue separate from the strait’s closure.”
Iran tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz on Feb. 28, barring safe passage of vessels belonging to or affiliated with Israel and the United States following their joint strikes on Iranian territory. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
