Trump Eyes Strait of Hormuz Takeover as Oil Tops $100

War “Very Complete,” Trump Says

On day ten of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, President Donald Trump declared the campaign essentially finished. Speaking by phone to CBS News from Doral, Florida, on Monday, Trump said Iran had lost its navy, communications infrastructure and air force, and that its missile and drone capabilities had been reduced to a bare minimum. He claimed the military was running well ahead of his original four-to-five-week timeline.

At a press conference later that evening, Trump predicted the war would end “very soon” and warned Tehran that any attempt to disrupt oil flows would be met with force twenty times greater than what Iran had already absorbed.

Strait of Hormuz: The World’s Most Dangerous Bottleneck

The most consequential moment came when Trump floated a U.S. takeover of the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway between Iran and Oman carries roughly 13 million barrels of crude daily — about a fifth of global seaborne oil — and has been effectively paralyzed since the conflict erupted on February 28.

The closure has triggered cascading production cuts across the Gulf. Iraq’s output from its three largest southern oilfields has collapsed by 70%, falling to 1.3 million barrels per day from a pre-war level of 4.3 million. Kuwait and the UAE have also scaled back as storage capacity runs thin, and Qatar’s energy minister warned that Gulf producers could halt exports entirely within days.

Oil Markets Swing Wildly

Brent crude surged past $119 per barrel in early Monday trading — the first time oil broke the $100 barrier since 2022 — before plunging more than $25 after Trump’s remarks. By the close, Brent had settled near $99, though it remained sharply above pre-conflict levels around $72. U.S. gas prices have climbed 17% since the war began, reaching $3.48 per gallon.

G7 finance ministers discussed a coordinated release of strategic oil reserves, saying they “stand ready to take necessary measures.” The IEA noted that member countries hold over 1.2 billion barrels of emergency stocks. The Trump administration has so far declined to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

New Supreme Leader Signals Defiance

Hours before Trump’s CBS interview, Iran’s Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei — the 56-year-old son of slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — as the country’s third supreme leader. The appointment signals continuity and defiance: the younger Khamenei is a hardliner with deep ties to the Revolutionary Guard who has never held elected office. Trump dismissed him as a “lightweight,” while Israel‘s military threatened to target any successor.

For global markets, the appointment deepened uncertainty. Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy Group told CNBC that traders had spent decades assuming no country would be allowed to shut Hormuz, calling the disruption “completely calamitous.” Goldman Sachs warned that five more weeks of disrupted shipping could push prices well beyond $100, with knock-on effects for inflation and growth across Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Seven U.S. Soldiers Dead

The Pentagon confirmed the death of a seventh American service member on Monday. Army Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, of Kentucky, died from injuries sustained during an Iranian attack on a base in Saudi Arabia on March 1. Six Army reservists were killed the same day in a drone strike on a command center in Kuwait.

Trump acknowledged the likelihood of further casualties but insisted families of the fallen had urged him to “finish the job.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CBS that the heaviest phase of the bombing campaign — using conventional gravity bombs of up to 2,000 pounds — had not yet begun, suggesting the conflict’s most destructive chapter may still lie ahead.

This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Latin American news and Latin American financial news.

For more context, read Brazil’s Morning Call and the Chile IPSA report.