Iran will control the Strait of Hormuz “forever”, regardless of what a peace deal between the US and the Islamic Republic says, forcing Gulf states to build new pipelines to bypass Iran’s chokehold, a former senior US official said on Tuesday.
“The Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian control forever - basically for the foreseeable future,” Amos Hochstein, an energy and Middle East adviser to former US President Joe Biden, told Bloomberg.
“Nobody in the market should look at what the deal says eventually and believe it on [the] straits. Iran will control the straits,” Hochstein said when asked about negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran to end the US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic.
Iran said on Wednesday it was reviewing a new peace proposal by the US after the Trump administration rejected an Iranian bid to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for an end to the war and pushing back negotiations on its nuclear programme.
Trump said on Wednesday he believed a deal with Iran was "very possible", but threatened to resume his bombardment of the country if negotiations fell apart. He added that the US would only settle for Iran’s “surrender”.
