News Investigators/ 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,” PGSA stated.
The PGSA claimed in a social media post on X that “Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted”.
The PGSA’s remarks came after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed earlier that the country maintains “total control” of the strait of Hormuz 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.
The newly-appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed unless the U.S. changed its behaviour and accepts Iran’s conditions, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Rezaei said: “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. ”
He said that Iran’s other conditions had been conveyed to the United States through mediators.
Rezaei also referred to the ongoing negotiations between Iran and Oman over the designation of a new route through the strait.
He emphasised that 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 U.S.
This followed the joint strikes on Iranian territory by the two countries.
Xinhua/NAN