US President Donald Trump said yesterday that the renewed US campaign against Iran would not continue for ‘too long’ after the biggest exchange of fire between Tehran and Washington since July.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Iran was trying to build a rocket that drops mines and the US had destroyed it.
He also said Iran had been working to restore its radar and missile systems, which were also targeted in the US strikes.
“We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz – some defensive, some offensive ... It was a very heavy attack last night, and we’re prepared to do another one any time we want,” he said.
However, Trump added that he would not force Iran to the negotiating table, calling on the Iranian people to ‘rise up and fight’.
“I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better,” he said adding that the US was in almost total control of the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran’s economy was “totally collapsing.”
“They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”
Trump yesterday suggested renaming the Strait of Hormuz as ‘Trump Strait’ despite the fact that the crucial waterway remains contested amid the war with Iran.
“Now that we have it under USA control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” Trump said on his Truth Social network.
It is the latest geographical name change floated by Trump and comes a week after he ordered Lake Ontario to be renamed as ‘Lake America’ amid a trade war with Canada.
Trump also renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ on his first day back in office in January 2025.
Neither Mexico nor Canada have accepted the changes.
Many of the previous name changes started off as apparently jovial remarks by the 80-year-old US president before he then followed through to make them a reality.
Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly pressed a threat to claim sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, even posting a map showing the waterway as a ‘new US territory’.
But Iran has effectively shut down the chokepoint, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, in retaliation for the war Trump started along with Israel in late February.
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