US says it can keep naval blockade on Iran 'indefinitely,' vows more economic pressure

PANAMA CITY: The United States on Thursday said that it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely and would ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered, global oil supply is dropping and regional tensions are rising.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the US military has the capability to maintain a naval presence in the region to enforce its blockade of Iran, which has inflicted severe economic damage on the country.

"Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we'll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we'll continue to," Hegseth told reporters during a trip to Panama.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the United States planned to inflict more financial damage on Iran.

"Watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country," he said in an interview on Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" program.

With a tentative June deal to end the war in tatters, Iran has sought to exert leverage on Washington in return by controlling the Strait of Hormuz.

It has attacked some vessels trying to transit the strategic waterway, through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas traveled before the war began in February.

Two vessels from the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company were attacked transiting the strait on Thursday evening, UAE state news agency WAM reported. The United Arab Emirates government condemned it as an Iranian attack.

US President Donald Trump is under pressure at home to end a war that is deeply unpopular, with high fuel prices dragging down his approval ratings and potentially eroding his party's control of Congress in midterm elections in November.

Trump has repeatedly asserted that the US has "total control" over the strait, prompting Iranian denials. Tehran has said it will not allow the waterway to reopen until its conditions are met. These include removing economic sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to eight vessels on Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 12 vessels, and 130 to 140 ships before the war.

The US lifted its blockade of Iran's shipping and ports for a month in mid-June but has since reimposed it, cutting off Tehran's primary source of hard currency and compounding earlier losses from wartime strikes on its energy infrastructure.

The US has tightened economic sanctions against Iran and other individuals and entities that it says are helping it procure weapons, but the pressure campaign has failed to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table.

Stress is mounting on the global economy. The International Energy Agency on Wednesday forecast that global oil supply would fall by 4.3 million barrels per day, or around 4 percent, this year.

Hegseth declined to comment on a question about whether, in retrospect, it was a mistake to declare a ceasefire in April, a move that ended high-tempo bombing of Iran in exchange for peace negotiations that have failed to resolve the conflict.

"I'm never going to comment on that. We're doing exactly what we need to, to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon," Hegseth said.