NOW PLAYING
President Trump is ramping up hostilities with Iran again, but critics question whether renewed U.S. military action can change the fundamental shape of the conflict.
If it fails to do so, Trump could end up even more deeply entangled in an issue that is unpopular with the American people as the clock ticks down to November’s midterm elections.
Trump announced in a Monday morning social media post that he was “reinstating” the U.S.-led naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, which was first enacted to curb Iranian exports and force Tehran to lift its own de facto block of the vital shipping channel.
Trump wrote in his post that the U.S. should be viewed as the “guardian” of the strait, adding, “as a matter of FAIRNESS, [we] will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped.”
A toll would be massively controversial. Secretary of State Marco Rubio just last month railed against the concept when it looked like the Iranians would be the beneficiaries.
“No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway,” Rubio said in June. “That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world.”
The president will address the nation at 9 p.m. EDT on Thursday, the White House announced, and Iran could certainly be the topic.
It also emerged on Monday that Trump formally notified Congress last week that the U.S. had resumed military strikes against Iran. The move gives him another 60 days of leeway to continue such action without explicit congressional approval.
Trump’s actions were sparked in part by Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the strait in recent days. But his broader objection is to continued Iranian control over the narrow body of water, through which, under normal circumstances, around 20 percent of the world’s oil transits.
The president faces the same problem now as he did when the war was in full effect, however.
“Trump is trying to return to military pressure in order to extract more concessions from Iran by force. But that is unlikely to work,” Iranian American commentator Negar Mortazavi told this column.
“Iran has already shown that it is willing to fight, escalate, and absorb significant costs, but not capitulate under pressure,” added Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
In the meantime, tensions in the strait and the threat of continued conflict are elevating oil prices, which ultimately hurt Americans at the gas pump and exacerbate existing inflationary pressures.
Oil prices spiked by more than 9 percent at one point on Monday. The price of oil is significantly above the level seen before the war started in late February, though it is also much lower than the peaks it hit later in the spring.
On financial markets, economic worries related to the Iran confrontation saw the broad-based S&P 500 index fall around three-quarters of a percentage point on Monday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fared even worse, shedding roughly 1.5 percent.
Trump has cast his recent actions as necessary to counter what he sees as Iranian mendacity over the controversial memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreed upon in June.
During a Fox News phone interview on Monday morning, Trump talked in general terms about how the U.S. frequently believed it had come to an agreement with the Iranians, but “they always break it.”
Later, speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt, he argued that MOUs “when you’re dealing with sleazebags don’t mean much.”
Critics, however, push back, noting that the text of the MOU in effect cedes control of the strait to Iran, with the Islamic Republic agreeing merely to not charge tolls for shipping “for 60 days only.”
To be sure, the U.S. side argues that the Iranians are violating the agreement, too, by their attacks on shipping.
At base, Iran believes it successfully rebuffed the joint U.S.-Israeli attack that began on Feb. 28 in large part because of its control of the strait and its resulting leverage on global energy prices.
Iran therefore wants to retain that control at almost any cost — including by intimidating ships out of using a different route closer to the coast of Oman than Iran.
On Monday, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Mohammad Mokhber, wrote on social media that the strait’s “strategic value” to Iran has “no substitute.”
“We defend it so that in the future, for the passage of our ships, we are not forced to pay tribute to the enemy! Retreating from this vital matter has no place in the mind of any friend of Iran,” Mokhber wrote.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was more sardonic, writing on the social platform X that Trump was “absolutely right” that whoever provides safe passage of ships “should be compensated for this service.” It was Iran, he said, that would remain the guardian of the strait “forever.”
He added, “20% is of course too much. We will be fair.”
To be sure, some of the more hawkish voices on Iran will welcome Trump’s aggressive line.
But others see it very differently.
Allison McManus, managing director of national security and international policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, told this column, “It seems as though Trump is kind of grasping at straws here, stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
She added, “The Trump administration is really looking for any kind of announcement to give the impression they have some control, when it’s a situation over which they practically have very little control.”
Aaron David Miller, who served in the State Department for more than two decades and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that Trump is, in the end, reduced to grappling for a least-bad option.
“The reality is that the president is in a box and the options are all unpalatable,” Miller said.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Abbas Araghchi Donald Trump Hugh Hewitt Marco Rubio Mohammad Mokhber Mojtaba KhameneiCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Comments: Link copiedMore Administration News
See All
Defense Trump says US will ‘take out’ Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility by Ellen Mitchell 39 minutes ago Defense / 39 minutes ago 
