Trump says will 'soon' declare Hormuz strait US territory

BREAKING: Trump says he will 'soon' declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory, claiming 'we have the blockade, no ships get through unless we want them to.'

Donald Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will soon be US territory. His words, not mine. He says America has the blockade, and quote, no ships get through unless we want them to.

Quick geography. The strait is a narrow channel between Iran and Oman, and a huge share of the world's oil moves through it. You can see it here, tankers queuing through a waterway that at its tightest is barely twenty miles wide. And nobody owns it. Under the law of the sea it belongs to no single country, and half its shoreline is Iranian.

So declaring it American territory isn't paperwork, it's a claim on Iran's front door. Tehran has spent decades warning it could close that strait. Washington saying it now owns the thing is the kind of sentence that moves oil prices before anyone fires a shot.

No date given, just soon. And with this administration, soon has a habit of meaning tomorrow morning.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.

Source Read the original reporting at channelnewsasia.com