US PLEDGES NEW MEASURES AGAINST IRAN IN COMING WEEK
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the US military has the capability to maintain a naval presence in the region to enforce its retaliatory 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 during a trip to Panama.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US planned to inflict more financial damage 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,” he said in an interview on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” programme.
US President Donald Trump is under pressure at home to end an unpopular war, with high fuel prices dragging down his approval ratings and potentially eroding his party’s control of Congress in midterm elections in November.
Benchmark Brent futures and US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were both up slightly at about US$87 and US$81 a barrel, respectively.
India’s reliance on Russian crude surged to a record in July, while refineries in Asia, a major customer for fuel from the Gulf, bought US crude this week to ensure future supplies.
Trump has repeatedly asserted that the US has “total control” over the strait, through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flowed before the start of the war, prompting Iranian denials.
Tehran has said it will not allow the waterway to reopen until its conditions are met. These include removing economic sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets.
On Thursday, an Iranian parliamentary committee approved Iran’s plan for the strait. It includes a provision banning the transit of US-, Israeli- and other “hostile” countries’ assets and equipment, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The US 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.
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