US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would soon be declaring the Strait of Hormuz to be American territory.
“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon, I will be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," the President said in a speech on Long Island, New York during a rally for gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.
“What we are doing [in Iran] is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves, for the world," Trump continued.
He further stated, “Nobody has any idea how successful we are [in Iran]. You know who knows how well we are doing? Iran."
“They had 212 very nice airplanes, some bought from the United States, brilliantly, through Obama. And every one of their airplanes is shot down, it’s gone," Trump said.
He also said that Iran has “no leadership. Their leadership is gone. Their second tier is gone. The third tier is half gone. That’s one of my problems, that there is nobody to negotiate with. It's a problem. It's the only country in the world where nobody wants to be president."
On Thursday, US Vice President JD Vance spoke to Fox News and defined America's primary goals in the ongoing standoff as guaranteeing global energy market stability and stopping Tehran from securing nuclear capabilities.
Outlining Washington's two main mandates, Vance stated, “It's ensuring that the Gulf countries continue to send oil and gas to the world economy so that we have energy price stability. That's obviously important for the American people. I know that oil is down today and it's way down from the highs in the early days of the conflict. That's goal number one, keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country."
“And then obviously goal number two is [to] ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. I feel confident we're accomplishing both of those goals, but it's inherently an unpredictable thing because the Iranians themselves are unpredictable and they sometimes don't honor the commitments they've made to us," Vance concluded.
Later on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared that Washington is preparing to execute economic actions against Tehran on a scale never previously attempted.
"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," Bessent told Newsmax in an interview.
"It will be a combination of economic isolation like the world has never seen before, and the continued blockade in the Strait of Hormuz that will keep anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports," he added.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)