U.S. signals it can keep up naval blockade indefinitely, increase economic pressure on Iran

The United States on Thursday threatened to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, ratcheting up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered, global oil supply ‌is dropping and regional tensions are rising.

U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the U.S. military could keep a naval presence in the region to enforce its blockade of Iran, which has inflicted severe economic damage on the country.

"Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we'll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we'll continue to," Hegseth ​told reporters on a trip to Panama.

With a tentative June deal to end ​the war in tatters, Iran has sought to control the Strait of Hormuz and has attacked some vessels trying to transit the strategic waterway, through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas travelled before the war ​began in February.

Two vessels from the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company were attacked transiting the strait on ⁠Thursday evening, UAE state news agency WAM ⁠reported. The United Arab Emirates government condemned it as an Iranian attack.

Shipping ‌traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to eight vessels on Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 12 vessels, and 130 to 140 ships before the war.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that the U.S. has "total control" over the strait.

Iran said in an X post that those claims "do not change the reality. The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will ⁠not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted." Those include removing economic sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets.

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 Iranian 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 thus far resisted deploying ground troops or seizing strategic islands and bombing desalination plants. Earlier this week, Trump suggested ​he would rely on economic means, rather than military action.

On Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States will soon announce measures that ​have "never been seen" on Iran.

"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," Bessent ‌said in an interview on on Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight program.

"It will be a ​combination of economic isolation ⁠like the world has never ⁠seen before, and the continued ⁠blockade ⁠in ​the Strait of Hormuz that will ​keep ⁠anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports."