World News
United States sets out fresh Iran sanctions with the Strait of Hormuz still shut
By Staff Writer | 24 August 2026
The measures were due to be announced on Monday, a week after the sixty day period set by the June memorandum ran out. Tehran says any neighbour that joins the pressure will be treated as an enemy.
The United States was due to announce a new set of sanctions on Iran on Monday, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed to most traffic and the two sides no closer to talks. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, is to set out the measures, having said earlier that they would be the toughest in history.
The announcement lands a week after the sixty day period set by the memorandum of understanding signed in June ran out. That understanding was reached through mediators and included substantial concessions to Iran in return for free passage of shipping through the Strait. The passage never opened.
We tell all countries around us: do not join the US in its economic war, otherwise, we will regard you as an enemy
Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council
Mohsen Rezaei, who was appointed this month as Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, made the remark in an interview broadcast on Iranian state television. He said states that worked with Washington could have their interests attacked, and that Tehran could strike export routes that bypass the Strait. He also said the waterway would stay shut until Washington changed course, while maintaining that Iran remains responsible for managing it.
Rezaei added: "Not a single drop of oil will leave the Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz." That is his statement of intent, not a description of what has happened.
Two voices out of Tehran
The president has taken a different line from the security establishment. Masoud Pezeshkian used a speech published by the Iranian state news agency on Sunday to defend the memorandum as the best available way out of what he called a position of neither war nor peace.
There is not a single provision in this agreement that amounts to capitulation
Masoud Pezeshkian, President of Iran
He tied the argument to money. Iran cannot draw investment while the fighting is unresolved, he said, and the risk has to come off the country before capital returns.
Capital and money are extremely sensitive to risk
Masoud Pezeshkian, President of Iran
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, said the planned measures were an attempt to impose one country's authority on independent states, and that secondary sanctions of that kind have no foundation in international law. The governor of the central bank, Abdolnaser Hemmati, told state television last week that counterparts abroad had reported Iranian oil revenue at zero, adding: "There is no doubt that we have restrictions on oil exports."
What is diverging in the reporting
The two accounts read for this piece do not agree on the calendar. One places the end of the sixty day period last week. The other places it on Monday, the same day as the announcement. Both are given here because the difference matters to anyone counting days on a shipment. On the substance the two agree: no compromise on reopening the Strait, and no scheduled return to negotiation.
One further point is common to both. China buys more than 80 per cent of Iran's seaborne crude, so measures aimed at buyers, shipping companies or the banks in between reach Chinese trade directly. Beijing has called for diplomacy and set itself against unilateral measures.
Why a closed strait reaches a construction contract
Every project priced on delivered energy, delivered steel or delivered plant sits downstream of this. A chokepoint that stays shut lengthens voyages, raises war risk premiums and moves the delivery dates that programmes were built on. None of that is a variation in itself.
The clause to read is the one nobody reads at tender. A change in law provision will usually reach a sanctions measure imposed after the base date; a force majeure provision will usually reach the closure of a waterway; and a fixed price with neither will leave the cost with whoever has to buy. Six months into this, the contracts being signed now are the ones that will be argued about later.