US President Donald Trump speaks during a Rose Garden Club event on the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2026.
Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. is “going to get paid for guarding” the Strait of Hormuz, the major oil-shipping route and epicenter of the re-escalating war with Iran.
“We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Trump said in a Fox News interview, which came amid new exchanges of fire between U.S. and Iran that have put the prospect of a peace deal further out of reach.
Oil prices rose Monday morning, while stock indexes fell.
“We’ll become the guardian of the strait — maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait,” Trump told Fox. “And we should be reimbursed for that.”
“We can’t be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years,” he added. “We guarded it for nothing, and now we’re going to guard it, we’re going to get paid for guarding it. A lot of money.”
The president expressed his interest in charging protection money in the strait as Washington and Tehran both assert de facto control over the international waterway, which saw 20% of the world’s oil trade before being choked off at the start of the war in late February.
Since the conflict began, Iran has signaled plans to charge tolls or other fees for ships transiting the waterway — a scenario the U.S. has rejected.
The temporary ceasefire deal the U.S. and Iran signed in mid-June explicitly prohibited Tehran from imposing any charges on commercial ships passing through the strait.
But that deal has been so undermined by repeated attacks in the region that Trump last week declared the ceasefire was “over.”
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.
