US President Trump says in interview on Michael Cohen's podcast that with Iran, the US is essentially and soon controlling the strait, also notes that Iran has some missiles and drones, but low capacity to build

• Trump says we have destroyed Iran's naval and air forces and it's not easy to make a deal because we have eliminated the Iranian leadership.

Remarks about control of the strait go to the single most-trafficked chokepoint for seaborne crude, and episodes in which its status is contested have historically been priced first through freight rates, war-risk insurance premia, and front-dated crude spreads rather than through outright levels. Presidential statements of this kind sit in a long pattern of coercive signalling toward Tehran, where the market-relevant distinction has been between rhetoric and any change in actual tanker flows; insurance and shipping costs have tended to move on the former only when backed by visible naval posture. Claims that an adversary's leadership and conventional forces have been eliminated are harder to trade than the residual capability mentioned, since drones and missiles have historically been the asymmetric channel through which shipping is threatened even when conventional forces are degraded. The follow-ons that have mattered in comparable episodes are confirmation from operational or allied sources, any movement in tanker traffic or charter rates through the strait, and whether the remarks precede negotiation or escalation. As unverified claims delivered in an interview setting, the signal is directional rather than actionable on its own.