Trump Claims Hormuz Control as Oil Holds Near $96

Brent crude for November delivery rose 0.92% to $95.52 a barrel on Wednesday after fresh U.S. and Iranian strikes around the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. West Texas Intermediate for October added 0.60% to $90.76.

President Donald Trump said he is not trying to force Iran back to talks and that he likes almost total control of the waterway, with Tehran’s economy “totally collapsing.” A tanker leaving the strait had just reported three unknown projectiles.

Trump Prefers the Strait He Already Claims

On Truth Social, Trump rejected reports that Washington was pushing Iran toward a new bargain, six months after the United States and Israel opened the war on February 28. He treated a deal as optional and the present military position as the point of the campaign.

I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table, as ABC Fake News reported. I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?

Donald Trump, U.S. president, on Truth Social

He has used that language before. In mid-August he told reporters the United States had total control and owned the strait, and he posted a map branded as new U.S. territory. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran was “not looking for war” but would “never sit still in the face of any aggression.”

U.S. Central Command said the latest American strikes followed attempted IRGC attacks on commercial shipping in the strait and on American service members. On Sunday, U.S. forces hit two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island after, CENTCOM said, the IRGC prepared to fire rockets carrying sea mines into the channel. It was the first publicly acknowledged U.S. strike on Iranian positions in several weeks.

Three Projectiles Hit an Outbound Tanker

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said a tanker completing an outbound transit was struck by three unknown projectiles about 17 nautical miles east of Khasab, Oman. The report reached UKMTO from a company security officer at 2000 UTC on August 31. No casualties and no environmental impact were reported, and the origin of the projectiles has not been established.

https://x.com/UK_MTO/status/2094558750254256319

Maritime security firm Vanguard Tech named the ship as the Liberia-flagged Senegal Prosperity and said the rockets hit the port side, engine room, and ballast tank, knocking out communications, with the crew safe. AIS watchers separately flagged the Saudi-flagged VLCC Sidr slowing to about 0.6 knots in the same patch, so the public identity of the hit hull is not settled.

THIS WEEK ON THE WATER

• August 29: UKMTO warned that a tanker inbound about 12 nautical miles north of Khasab was struck by an unknown projectile, with no casualties, on the U.S.-established route through Omani waters.
• August 30: U.S. forces struck two IRGC launchers on Larak Island that CENTCOM said were being readied to put sea mines into the strait.
• August 31: The outbound tanker reported three unknown projectiles 17 nautical miles east of Khasab, again on the southern corridor.
• September 2: CENTCOM said it had completed a further wave of strikes on Iranian air-defence sites, mine-laying gear, and communications.

Jordan’s army said it intercepted eight Iranian missiles after the Larak raid, aimed, Iranian media said, at King Hussein and Al-Azraq bases. The UAE defence ministry said its air force responded to a drone over territorial waters approaching from Iran and rejected claims that Al Minhad air base was hit. A UKMTO overview dated August 28 had already logged 23 projectile-strike incidents since July 6, with the southern Omani route accounting for 16 of 18 strikes in that file, and AIS-detected transits about 90% below pre-conflict baselines.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The hit: UKMTO confirmed an outbound tanker was struck by three unknown projectiles east of Khasab, with crew reported safe.
• The route: Recent projectile reports cluster on the U.S.-designated southern corridor through Omani waters, not only on Iran’s preferred northern track.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The ship’s name: Vanguard Tech identified Senegal Prosperity; AIS traffic in the same area pointed at Sidr, and UKMTO did not name the vessel.
• Who fired: Authorities have not attributed the three projectiles, and the type of round has not been established.

The Omani-side canal is the exhibit Washington uses for control. It is also the lane where hulls keep taking fire.

Why Brent Still Trades Near $96

Brent at $95.52 is off the spring panic and still a long way from a normal Gulf market. In 2025, about 20 million barrels a day of oil, roughly 25% of world oil trade and 34% of seaborne crude, moved through Hormuz, along with about 19% of seaborne LNG. The International Energy Agency in June called the shock the largest supply disruption on record, with losses above 1.3 billion barrels from Middle East producers, as strait flows fell from about 20 million barrels a day before the war to an average of 2.7 million in March, April, and May.

North Sea Dated, the physical benchmark, hit an all-time high of $144 a barrel in early April, more than double pre-war levels, with even steeper gains in jet fuel and diesel. Prices later eased because demand broke. The IEA cut its outlook to a drop of almost 5 million barrels a day in the second quarter from a year earlier, and 1.1 million barrels a day for 2026 as a whole, against a February forecast of 850,000 barrels a day of growth. Global inventories have fallen by 3.8 million barrels a day since the fighting began, and China cut crude imports by 40%, or 4.6 million barrels a day, between February and May.

IEA members agreed in March to release 400 million barrels from emergency stocks, the agency’s largest coordinated release, which was putting 2.5 million barrels a day on the market by May. The United States said it would contribute 172 million barrels over 120 days. By early July, member releases had reached 276 million barrels. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has said the stock release is a short-term patch, and that the lasting fix is a full reopening of the strait.

HORmuz OIL, THEN AND NOW

Tuesday’s settlement had already repriced the Larak exchange, with WTI up 5.2% to $90.22 and Brent up 4.6% to $94.65, before Wednesday’s smaller add-on. Edward Rosenberg, head of ETFs at Strategy Shares, said the longer the war runs, the longer prices stay both elevated and volatile, because sanctions, stalled talks, and mixed signals on whether Iran wants an end swing the tape day to day.

Single-Digit Transits After the June Reopening

Control, in the White House telling, is a cleared southern lane and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. Traffic data describes a waterway that briefly reopened and then shut again.

HOW THE STRAIT OPENED AND SHUT

1. February 28, 2026: The United States and Israel launch strikes across Iran. Tehran asserts control of Hormuz, and cross-strait traffic largely halts, trapping hundreds of ships and thousands of mariners in the Gulf.
2. April 7, 2026: Washington and Tehran agree to a two-week ceasefire that Trump said was subject to a complete, immediate, and safe opening of the strait. Traffic ticks up, then stalls again.
3. April 13, 2026: Trump orders a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. CENTCOM later said it redirected more than 140 ships and disabled nine that did not comply.
4. June 17, 2026: Trump and Pezeshkian sign a memorandum that lifts the U.S. naval blockade and provides for safe passage with no charge for 60 days only.
5. June 25 to 26, 2026: Kpler records the post-deal peak, with crude and condensate through the strait at 11.9 million barrels a day and commodity transits at a seven-day average of 44, still far below the pre-war 100-plus.
6. July 7 to 14, 2026: Fighting resumes. Trump says the memorandum is no longer in force. The United States reinstates the blockade on July 14 after a 13-day bombing stretch.
7. July 28, 2026: Commodity transits average seven a day. About 60% of remaining moves run with AIS off. LNG transits have been at zero since July 12.
8. August 27, 2026: Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, says internationally recognised lanes are free of Iranian sea mines and that U.S. forces have helped more than 1,500 vessels carrying more than 750 million barrels over several months.
9. August 30 to 31, 2026: U.S. aircraft hit the Larak launchers. The outbound tanker reports three projectiles on the Omani route Cooper had just called open.

Kpler, in a July 29 note that treated extended conflict as the base case, had crude flows of 1.7 million barrels a day through the strait as of July 28, mostly Iraq at about 850,000 and the UAE at about 570,000, and forecast Middle East crude and condensate outages averaging 9.9 million barrels a day against a February baseline from August through November. Ship-tracking from the same firm showed Monday’s visible crossings still in single digits, with no liquid tankers among them. Vessels that sail dark are not in that count, which is the point: a working strait does not have to hide.

https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2094228119079067852

CENTCOM called the Larak raid limited, precise action against minelaying forces posing an imminent threat, and said Iran created the threat the U.S. military then removed to protect mariners and cargo. Two days later a tanker on the protected route still took three rounds. Cooper’s escort tally is a cumulative figure over months, not a picture of a channel that can be used without a war premium.

The Blockade That Sanctions Never Delivered

Trump’s second claim, that Iran’s economy is collapsing, has more support in the export tape than the control claim has on the water. Since the blockade was put back on July 14, tracking firms Kpler, Vortexa, and TankerTrackers.com have recorded about seven weeks without meaningful Iranian crude getting through Hormuz to China. Tehran can still sell barrels already sitting in Asian floating storage, and it cannot easily replace them.

Iran loaded about 220,000 to 255,000 barrels a day of crude and condensate in August, down from roughly 740,000 in July and about 2 million in March, according to Vortexa and Kpler estimates. TankerTrackers co-founder Samir Madani said 29 tankers inside the strait were holding 36.11 million barrels. Vortexa had Iranian crude in floating storage west of the blockade line at 41.7 million barrels by August 26, up from 35.5 million at the end of July, while total Iranian crude afloat fell to 107 million barrels from 135 million. Homayoun Falakshahi, a Kpler analyst, said the export collapse drains a main source of foreign-currency income and could push Tehran toward printing money.

That is the half of Trump’s post the oil market can verify. The other half, almost total control, would show up as insured, named tankers moving in daylight on open transponders. Monday’s Kpler slice did not look like that, and the IRGC, after the latest American strikes, said the fighting would tighten the lock on the waterway rather than surrender it.

No Pipeline Replaces 20 Million Barrels

Gulf producers did reroute. They did not replace Hormuz. Saudi Arabia pushed crude through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, a line with about 7 million barrels a day of capacity. IEA figures show Yanbu exports rising from 2 million barrels a day before the war to more than 5 million in early June. The UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline runs 380 kilometres around the strait and can move 1.8 million barrels a day, and with dark sailings along the Omani coast the UAE got total oil exports to 4.3 million barrels a day in early June, up from 1.9 million in March, about 85% of pre-war levels.

Atlantic Basin barrels filled part of the hole. U.S. crude and product exports hit a record 13.1 million barrels a day in May, up nearly a quarter from a year earlier, with extra volumes also leaving Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Venezuela. U.S. refiners flipped from net jet-fuel importers in April 2025 to net exporters, and West African jet-fuel exports nearly doubled, led by Nigeria’s Dangote plant, after the Middle East, the world’s largest aviation-fuel supplier in 2025, dropped out.

WHAT ACTUALLY BYPASSES HORMUZ

Even when some dark crude moved, refined product cargoes stayed bottled up. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, drawing on IEA figures, found seaborne trade in refined products down 3.8 million barrels a day year on year in July, more than half of that diesel and jet fuel, after Middle East refinery runs fell 27% to about 6.5 million barrels a day in the second quarter. Of the 400 million barrel IEA release, 72% was crude and only 28% finished product. Houthi pressure on the Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea door Saudi now needs, cut commodity transits there to 24 a day from 34 in Kpler’s late-July read, with Yanbu loadings still near 3.8 million barrels a day on a 10-day average. The bypass works until the second choke point does not.

Control Talk Still Moves the Monday Open

On August 31, Trump said oil was going to go down like a rocket as soon as the United States won the war, because “we have control of the Hormuz strait.” Two sessions later Brent was $95.52 and climbing, not falling. The claim has been on the tape since the first week of fighting, which is why a Sunday line about the strait still shows up in Monday prices: traders have learned to fade the victory language and trade the next projectile report.

The longer the war with Iran goes on, oil prices will continue to stay elevated and volatile. Sanctions, stalled negotiations, and mixed signals on whether Iran wants the war to end are swinging prices day to day, not just holding them high.

Edward Rosenberg, head of ETFs, Strategy Shares

Iranian state media on Wednesday claimed ballistic missiles and drones against U.S. sites in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait after the new American wave. Jordan’s air defences were reported to have intercepted 13 ballistic missiles, and Kuwait said its air defences were responding to drones. Those damage claims from Tehran have not been independently confirmed, which is now the pattern: a verified tanker hit, a verified intercept, and a much larger IRGC scoreboard.

The position Trump says he likes is a strait he can mine-sweep and bomb, and an Iran that cannot sell crude. It is also a market that still cannot move 20 million barrels a day in the open, and a November Brent contract that settled Wednesday at $95.52 because that condition has no end date attached.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of oil prices, shipping, and the U.S.-Iran conflict for information only. It is not investment, trading, or energy-procurement advice, and it does not recommend buying, selling, or hedging any crude, product, equity, or futures contract. Readers who may act on oil or shipping exposure should consult a licensed financial adviser, commodity broker, or compliance officer who can review their specific positions. Figures and military claims reflect the official statements, tracking data, and incident reports cited as of September 2, 2026, and both prices and battlefield reports can change within a session.