IRAN’S Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that American intelligence failures have led Washington to repeat its mistakes with the Islamic Republic, warning that the United States is making an ‘even bigger miscalculation’ over the Strait of Hormuz.
He made the remarks in an X post on Thursday, after US President Donald Trump claimed that his country has ‘total control’ of the Strait, despite shipping traffic through the strategic waterway dropping to a one-week low as only eight vessels transited the strait, under Iranian route, compared to around 130 daily transits prior to the war.
Araghchi concluded ‘The US has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures. Worse than fake news is fake intelligence!’
Iran restricted transit through the Strait of Hormuz, responsible for a fifth of global oil demand, in response to the illegal US-Israeli aggression on the country that began on February 28th and came to a halt under a ceasefire on April 8th.
On June 17th, Tehran and Washington signed the Pakistan-brokered Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), whose Article 5 places responsibility for reopening and managing the Strait squarely in Iran’s hands.
However, the US has attempted to undermine Iran’s sovereignty over the vital global energy chokepoint by establishing an unsafe corridor near the Omani shores. The US also resumed its aerial assaults on Iran in violation of the war-ending deal.
The unlawful US measures prompted Iran to declare the Strait of Hormuz closed at least until ‘the end of US interference in the region’. Meanwhile, Iran and Oman are engaged in talks to reach an agreement on a new mechanism for managing shipping through the strait.
Iran has stressed that the reopening of the critical waterway depends on US compliance with its obligations under the MoU which was meant to end the war.
The Islamic resistance movement Hamas has strongly endorsed Iran’s firm stance on regional security, praising Tehran’s declaration that the strategic Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until a comprehensive, region-wide ceasefire is achieved, including an immediate end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
In a statement released on Thursday, Basem Naim, Head of the Office of Arab and Islamic Relations for Hamas, expressed the movement’s high appreciation for the remarks made by Major General Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), regarding the urgent need to halt the ongoing wars across West Asia.
‘Halting these wars is in the best interest of the region, its peoples, and its future,’ Naim stated. He warned that the continuation of hostilities serves only the strategic objectives of the Zionist enemy, whose overarching agenda is based on dismantling the region, destabilising its nations, and depleting its vital resources to maintain hegemony.
The remarks came after General Rezaei said in an X post that the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the United States ends its war and blockade against the Islamic Republic, releases Iran’s frozen financial assets, and formally agrees to a comprehensive, region-wide ceasefire that encompasses Gaza, Lebanon, and all other fronts of the Resistance.
Iran and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June that allowed Iran to manage the Strait and gradually return transit to normal levels, in return for the US lifting its sanctions and blockade on the country. However, Iran reinstated restrictions in Hormuz after the US violated the terms of the MoU by seeking to undermine Iran’s management of the strait.
Meanwhile, the Iranian ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the latest claims by Israeli officials over the occupied Golan Heights, emphasising that the strategic region is an ‘inseparable’ part of Syria.
The ministry, in a statement released on Thursday, vehemently condemned the rhetoric of criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Golan Heights, occupied by the Tel Aviv regime for almost 60 years, will remain part of Israel ‘for eternity’, and to his fierce opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
‘Basically, the leader of the criminal gang and mafia ruling over the occupied Palestinian territories is not in a position to comment on the formation of an independent Palestinian state, because the Palestinian land belongs to the Palestinian people, and the racist illusions of the genocidal Zionist regime cannot change this reality,’ the statement added.
It concluded that ‘the Golan Heights are an inseparable part of the territory of Syria!’