Trump said Thursday there would be “major military punishment” for both Iran and the Houthis after the Yemen-based rebels struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, days after saying they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.
“If they do this again, the United States will hold Iran responsible, as the Houthis are a surrogate and/or proxy for Iran,” Trump wrote Thursday in an article on Truth Social.
He also said later Thursday that Washington would use Iranian assets held by the United States to pay for “any damage caused to ships, goods or anything related to them”, sparking an outcry in Tehran.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the threat an “inflammatory precedent.”
“Those who celebrate or profit from such funds should remember that once governments normalize confiscation, no one’s assets are safe anymore,” Araghchi said in a message broadcast Friday morning local time.
Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is virtually halted due to continued Iranian attacks.
The only ship to completely cross the strait on Thursday was the oil tanker New Giant, bound for Rizhao in China.
The picture was less clear in the Red Sea, where some ships have turned back in the face of the Houthi threat but where traffic does not appear to have generally slowed down.
In the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Thursday, 8 tankers traveled north through the chokepoint to the Red Sea, and 14 headed south to the Gulf of Aden, according to an NBC News analysis of MarineTraffic data.
Some vessels may have their transmitters turned off, and therefore actual figures may be higher.
As the two blockades fuel fears over global energy supplies, the price of international benchmark Brent crude oil jumped above the $100 a barrel threshold on Thursday for the first time since May before falling again. Friday morning, it was hovering around $97 per barrel.
And the two sides continued to exchange airstrikes.
U.S. Central Command said it carried out a 13th straight night of strikes against Iran at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday.
CENTCOM said it targeted “Iranian military command centers, drone storage facilities, communications networks, coastal surveillance sites and maritime capabilities to further reduce the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
Impacts were reported across Iran, with the official IRNA news agency reporting that four people were killed and five injured in the Ahvaz region.
Tehran launched new strikes, notably against American bases in Kuwait, with Bahrain also activating its sirens. Explosions have been reported near a military base housing US forces in northern Iraq.
And as fears of further escalation grow, hopes for a revival of the peace process have dimmed.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi made his first official visit to Iran on Thursday since taking office in May, a remarkable visit given Iraq’s close ties with Washington and Tehran.
Trump said Thursday that the Iranians “want to negotiate” but are not yet ready to make a deal.
“They haven’t received enough pain yet,” he told Axios.
Richard Engel reported from Jerusalem, and Chantal Da Silva and Matthew Mulligan from London.