US President Trump stated the US maintains firm control over the Strait of Hormuz, describing the current military presence as a "wall of steel" blockade, reports Fox

• Trump warned that any Iranian aggression would be met with a response "100 times harder" and emphasised that the US only permits vessels to enter the strait at its discretion.

Hormuz rhetoric of this kind has recurred across successive US-Iran standoffs, and the established pattern is that crude trades on the gap between verbal escalation and any actual interference with tanker traffic: risk premia in Brent and WTI build quickly on threats and tend to bleed out just as quickly when loadings continue uninterrupted. The operative distinction is between transit risk and supply loss; the strait has never been durably closed in any prior episode, so what has historically mattered is insurance and freight rates on Gulf loadings, tanker rerouting, and whether harassment of vessels is reported rather than the rhetoric itself. Claims of discretionary control over entry are a step beyond the usual freedom-of-navigation framing and, if operationalised, would put commercial shipping decisions rather than military posture at the centre of the story. The follow-ons that have tended to confirm or deflate such episodes are war-risk premium quotes in the tanker market, any advisory notices to shipping, and Tehran's response through official channels rather than proxies. Gold and the yen have typically taken their cue from the crude impulse in comparable episodes, with equity impact concentrated in energy and defence names unless escalation becomes kinetic. As stated, this is rhetoric, and precedent says rhetoric alone fades.