Iranian Supreme Leader adviser Rezaei says we will not allow the opening of the second route in the Strait of Hormuz, and reiterates if the blockade continues, American ships and forces will face serious dangers and casualties, according to Tasnim

Threats against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz are a recurring feature of Iranian signalling during periods of confrontation, and officials close to the Supreme Leader have historically been used as the channel for calibrated escalation language without committing the state to action. The established pattern is that rhetoric of this kind prices through the crude prompt spread and through freight, insurance and war-risk premia on Gulf loadings rather than through outright closure, which has never actually been sustained even at the height of past tanker episodes; the market distinction that matters is between harassment risk to individual vessels and genuine interruption of transit volumes. The reference to a second route and to a blockade frames this as a response to ongoing pressure rather than a new initiative, which is consistent with prior cycles where Tehran matches sanctions or interdiction steps with Hormuz rhetoric rather than kinetic escalation. The tells worth noting are whether the language is repeated by serving military commanders rather than political advisers, any movement of naval assets or seizures of vessels, and whether Gulf producers or the US respond with escorted convoy arrangements, each of which has marked escalation and de-escalation phases in previous episodes. As an adviser's statement relayed through a semi-official agency, it sits in the signalling tier rather than the operational one.