President Donald Trump said that the United States will “keep” the Strait of Hormuz and serve as its “guardian.”
“We had a deal. It was a done deal, and then they broke it,” Trump said of Iran during an interview with “Fox & Friends.”
“They always break it. We’ve had 10 deals with these people, and so we’re just going to hit them very hard,” he said. “We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it.”
“We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll become the guardian angel of the strait, and we should be reimbursed for that,” Trump explained. “When we do that we’re going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy, they’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing unlike we had for many years.”
“We guarded the strait for 50 years – more – and we never got paid for it,” he added. “We guarded it for nothing. And now we’re gonna guard it, and we’re gonna get paid for guarding it.”
“But we just want to be reimbursed for doing all of this, for putting our people in danger, but we’re really saving people,” he further stated.
Trump doubled down on his “guardian” comments on Truth Social. Declaring that the strait is “OPEN, and will remain OPEN,” Trump noted, “The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately.”
