Tehran tells Trump the Strait of Hormuz ‘is not your personal casino’ after new threat

Jun 23, 2026 News

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(Independent) Iran hit back at Donald Trump on Monday after the U.S. president threatened to “take over the rest of the country” if the Strait of Hormuz is closed again.

“You make threats; we take action,” Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, wrote on social media in apparent reference to Trump.

“The Strait of Hormuz is neither your personal casino nor the backyard of modern-day pirates; these are Iranian sovereign waters, and the ultimate decision rests with the noble people of Iran and its brave armed forces.”

Iran lifted its effective blockade of Hormuz last week after agreeing with the U.S. to extend a ceasefire to allow for peace negotiations, but Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards on Saturday declared the waterway shut once again, in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon.

The U.S. president said in response he had warned Iranian officials that “you close [the strait] and you won’t have a country”, Fox News’s Trey Yingst reported on Sunday.

High stakes talks aimed at finalising a deal to end the war are meanwhile expected to continue through the week, after a “difficult” start that saw Iranian negotiators walk out over Trump’s “insults”.

Trump threatened to “take over” Iran if the Strait of Hormuz was not immediately re-opened, the president told Fox News.

His latest round of threats came in response to news Saturday that Iran was once again closing the key waterway, just days after signing an agreement to ensure that traffic could flow through. Iran announced that it would close the Strait of Hormuz after Israeli forces continued an all-out assault into Lebanon aimed at dislodging Hezbollah militants.

Fox’s Trey Yingst reported Sunday that in an early morning phone call, the U.S. president said he’d warned Iranian officials directly that “you close [the Strait of Hormuz] and you won’t have a country.”

“You won’t even make it back to your f***** country,” Yingst said the president claimed to have relayed to the Iranians, adding: “We’ll take over the rest of the country.”

The threat to occupy Iran as a whole is a new step for the president, who has been seeking a way out of the war he began since the conflict kicked off in February. In the days leading up to the ceasefire extension signing on Wednesday, the president was reportedly considering plans to deploy U.S. military forces with the goal of occupying Kharg Island, a major Iranian oil industry hub.

His latest disagreement with Tehran is a sign of just how shaky the U.S.-Iran ceasefire remains, as well as the continued failure of the White House to hold Israel in line. The Israeli offensive in Lebanon is viewed by some Trump advisers as an effort to directly undermine the ceasefire agreement signed by Trump, which Israeli officials have roundly denounced as insufficient.

Israel’s strikes in Lebanon since the war began have killed more than 4,000 people, according to officials, and a new Israeli offensive is being lauded by top Israeli officials.

On Friday, a post from Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was denounced by Iran’s foreign minister and many others after Ben-Gvir called for Israeli forces to “burn all of Lebanon”, declaring that “for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep”. Trump, despite his denunciations, has been unable to curb this rhetoric or the Israeli assault.

Vice President JD Vance departed for Switzerland this weekend as he is set to lead the latest round of peace talks with Iranian officials.

In recent days, the Trump administration has made no secret about its displeasure with Israel’s foreign policy. From behind the White House press briefing stand, Vice President JD Vance warned Israeli officials not to alienate their closest remaining ally, the United States, and on a podcast last week he signaled even greater frustrations as he remarked that Israel couldn’t simply “kill” their way out of every problem.

Trump has also echoed such feelings, and has remarked that Israel would supposedly not exist without his administration’s support.

But the more direct threats to Iran make another dynamic clear, too: When it comes down to it, the president will go much further to ensure Iran’s compliance with the ceasefire.

Signed on Wednesday, the 60-day agreement extends an existing ceasefire between U.S. and Iranian forces while extending sanctions relief and the promise of unfrozen funds in U.S. banking systems if Iran complies further with the agreement. The U.S. secured a commitment from Iran not to seek nuclear weapons that mirrors language from the Obama-era nuclear agreement Trump tore up in 2018, and commitments to address and find a way to remove nuclear materials buried by U.S. strikes last summer.

Conservative supporters of the president in Washington are divided over the agreement. Much of the terms appear to mirror the Obama nuclear deal Trump ripped up in 2018 and which was much maligned by the right over the years. In the past week, both Republican and Democratic critics of the president have emerged on Capitol Hill and the conservative media sphere to denounce the deal as a betrayal of Israel and a defeat for America, which blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and sought to pressure Iran to open the strait for months, with limited success.

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” wrote Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy on X after the deal’s terms were announced. “Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Of particular issue to both the deal’s hawkish critics on the right and the left is the administration’s tacit support of a $300 billion economic redevelopment fund for Iran. The White House and its allies maintain that this fund will not be supplied with American taxpayer dollars, and instead will represent a pool in which regional investors can contribute.

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• casino, Strait of Hormuz, Tehran, Trump, war

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