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Iran Denounces Trump as 'Delusional' for Posting False Strait of Hormuz Map

President Donald Trump shared this map labeling the Strait of Hormuz a "new US territory" on his Truth Social platform on August 18, 2026.

(Image by Donald Trump/Truth Social)

Iran Denounces Trump as 'Delusional' for Posting False Strait of Hormuz Map

The Iranian Parliament speaker said the strait will stay closed until the US blockade and oil embargo are lifted, and any party continuing its "aggression or threats" would face a "more severe defeat."

Just days after threatening to declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory, President Donald Trump on Tuesday posted a map on his Truth Social platform with that label over the crucial waterway—and was swiftly called out by a top Iranian diplomat.

"Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the Persian Gulf, his illusion about the Strait of Hormuz will soon be corrected—or we will correct the delusions of this delusional individual," Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, responded in Arabic on X.

Gharibabadi included a screengrab of Trump's post featuring a map that shows the strait, which is south of Iran and runs between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

Since Trump and Israel began illegally bombing Iran on February 28, the Middle East country has restricted traffic through the strait, a key shipping route, particularly for fossil fuels. That has driven up fuel prices worldwide, including in the United States, where the cost for a gallon of gasoline just hit a record high for mid-August.

Despite the economic toll at home, the range of impacts across the Middle East—where nearly six months of war have killed thousands of people—and a plummeting approval rating, Trump said last week that "I'll never apologize, I did the right thing."

That declaration and Trump's threat over the strait came in a Friday speech on Long Island, after which critics across the United States and beyond condemned the president as a "completely unhinged lunatic" and "sadistic violent menace to the world" who ought to be impeached again.

By Monday, a 60-day ceasefire deal expired, and neither side has signaled any progress on talks to end the war—which Trump claims is aimed at stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons, even though his own intelligence agencies have said it wasn't trying to do so. Trump notably ditched the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal during his first term.

According to Palestine Chronicle, Iranian Maj. Gen. Mostafa Izadi, deputy commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Tuesday that "the enemy failed to destroy Iran's defensive capabilities and nuclear industries."

As for the strait, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that it will stay closed until the US blockade and oil embargo are lifted, and warned that any party continuing its "aggression or threats" would face a "more severe defeat."

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