Iran war news Highlights: IRGC navy claims ‘decisive control’ over Hormuz; Trump announces ‘biggest oil deal'

Iranian leaders are acknowledging the economic toll of war with the U.S., with the supreme leader urging the government to address the hardship and the president saying foreign trade has shrunk by a third due to the American sanctions and blockade.

Yet Tehran signalled no retreat on Saturday, vowing to withstand U.S. pressure, pursue diplomacy and maintain what it said was control over the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway giving Iran leverage through its ability to disrupt global energy markets.

The government said in a statement on state media that addressing economic pressures caused by sanctions and war was a central focus, including curbing inflation, managing markets, creating jobs, directing investment towards domestic production and gradually reducing dependence on the dollar.

Six months after the U.S. and Israel launched the war, negotiations are at an impasse and President Donald Trump's administration has stepped up efforts to punish Iran financially with what it has billed as an "economic D-Day".

— Reuters

Six months into a conflict that President Donald Trump predicted would last “four to five weeks,” Republican strategists worry there’s no way to keep the Iran war from hurting the party’s prospects in November’s midterm elections.

The continuing hostilities have demoralized GOP voters, who sent Trump to the White House in order to tame inflation and keep the US out of overseas conflicts.

Compounding Republican fears is the president’s apparent lack of concern, even as the unpopular conflict drags down his approval rating and polls showing rising voter frustration with the war and the high gas prices and stubborn inflation it’s fueled.

Some forecasters now say Republicans risk losing control of both houses of Congress if the president can’t reverse that sentiment before Election Day. That would threaten Trump’s agenda for the rest of his term and subject his administration to a raft of investigations by rival Democratic lawmakers.

From the outset, Americans were skeptical about the war, although the issue split largely along party lines. After the massive early bombing campaign did not produce an Iranian surrender and the disruptions to energy markets spiked gas prices and stoked inflation, public sentiment began to shift. In recent months, surveys show US voters have steadily soured on the president, the war, and, increasingly, Republican candidates.

Many Republicans worry about the implications for November, but won’t say so publicly for fear of angering Trump. Several outside advisers to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they do not expect the war to be resolved or gas prices to go down before November. They also worry that the White House has damaged its credibility on Iran after Trump’s repeated claims that the Strait of Hormuz is open to ship traffic and that gas prices are falling.

— Bloomberg

After six months of war, Iran's leadership has coalesced around a hard core of military generals and clerics long entrenched in the ruling theocracy. They are ready for a potentially long confrontation with the US and determined to prevent any unrest at home.

It's a far cry from US President Donald Trump's initial hopes of toppling the Islamic Republic and his subsequent claims that "regime change" had brought more compromising officials to the fore.

Iran's new leaders evince little faith in any agreement with Trump - after coming under attack twice while holding talks - and they may be bracing for another assault once the US replenishes its supplies of interceptors. They have also threatened to escalate the war as a continuing American blockade and Trump's plans for new sanctions threaten to suffocate Iran's already worsening economy.

"If (Trump) wants to do something, we will retaliate in a seismic manner," the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said last weekend. In a post on X, he said that "if the economic war continues, not a single drop of oil will be exported" from the Persian Gulf.

Iran is determined to smother any internal unrest

Rezaei's appointment came in a recent set of decrees by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, that formally set Iran's new senior leadership, including top military posts. Khamenei's father and much of the highest echelons were killed in the bombing campaign launched by the US and Israel on February 28.

Perhaps most telling was the newly named head of the Basij, the Revolutionary Guard's volunteer street force, which played a major role in crushing January's nationwide protests, when thousands were killed.

— PTI

Since the United States went to war with Iran six months ago, Courtney Sanders has been helping soldiers’ families fill the gaps left by their loved ones.

There are school pickups to coordinate, lost incomes to supplement — and the ever-present separation anxiety.

“It's like being on pins and needles all of the time,” Sanders said.

She leads the Chicagoland chapter of Blue Star Families, the nation's largest nonprofit serving military families, and her own daughters are in the U.S. Navy. They have served in various overseas locations over the past six months, including the Middle East.

The U.S. has more than 50,000 troops stationed across the region and has deployed thousands of additional Marines and sailors to support the war effort. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict and more than 750 wounded.

During the war's on-and-off fighting, shuttle diplomacy and failed peace talks, military families have experienced a “roller coaster of emotions,” Sanders said. “The moment that you feel you're able to take a breath, you get gut-punched again.”

These are familiar pressures for the partners and children, mothers and fathers, of American troops. But the suddenness of the Iranian conflict, and its fitful pace, have had a compounding effect, relatives told Reuters.

In a Blue Star Families poll of some 200 active-duty military families in early March, 81% reported elevated stress from the Iran conflict.

The group has responded by stepping up its programming, creating online resource hubs, hosting webinars and in-person meet-ups, and matching military spouses going through a deployment for the first time with those who have been through it before.

Many service members' deployments have been extended unexpectedly.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier went more than 200 days without a port call — a modern-day record, according to Democratic lawmakers — and military outlets reported suicide attempts and declining morale among its 5,000 sailors and Marines. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the reports “completely misrepresented” the conditions on board.

Some military families find themselves in financial straits.

— Reuters

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has admitted that US sanctions on his country are hurting its economy, despite just days ago insisting they would achieve nothing.

"Some say sanctions have no effect at all; to those people, I really don't know what to say," Pezeshkian told state TV in an interview late on Friday.

"We are in a war situation, and we must accept these wartime conditions," he added.

— AFP

Iranian army commander-in-chief Amir Hatami said the “enemy” had attempted to destroy the country’s drone and missile capabilities, but Iran continued using its stockpile against them with the “utmost intensity until the last moment”, Fars news agency reported.

“In military logic, the aggressor and aggressor sides are considered victorious when they achieve their goals, but in defensive warfare, the failure of the enemy to achieve its goals means the victory of the defender,” he added.

Iran is now fighting an “economic war” after recent military conflict and the government is seeking to withstand pressure without surrendering, Labor Minister Ahmad Meydari said on Saturday.

“We are today engaged in an economic war,” Meydari said, according to the Iranian government's official website. “The enemy could not defeat us in the military war.”

He said the government was working with other state bodies to prevail economically while seeking what he described as lasting peace and future development.

“There is no such thing as surrender in the thinking of any of our statesmen,” Meydari said. “What we are pursuing is only lasting peace for the country.”

Meydari said war remained Iran's last option and that Tehran had not sought conflict.

“War is our last option,” he said. “But we will not surrender either.”

Iran’s trade with Dubai is showing growing signs of strain under the war and Washington’s new economic campaign, but sanctioned Iranian banks, flights and some commercial routes continue to operate despite calls for a sweeping cutoff, the Financial Times reported Saturday.

Shipping between Dubai Creek and Iranian ports has fallen sharply. At a terminal historically used by wooden dhows trading with Iran, a security guard told the FT vessels were now heading to Oman and India. “No more Iran since last week,” he said.

US Central Command said its forces had rerouted 82 commercial vessels as of August 28 while enforcing Washington’s maritime blockade of Iran. CENTCOM said US forces had also disabled three vessels and boarded two.

The command published an image of a US sailor aboard the destroyer USS John Paul Jones, saying the vessel was operating in regional waters as part of the blockade.

Iranian parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Friday backed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s call to preserve social cohesion.

“Any action that harms social cohesion is, for all of us, both nationally and religiously forbidden,” Ghalibaf wrote in a post on X.

“We pledge to the people and to the leader that, until our last breath, we will devote ourselves to serving the people and the progress of Iran,” he added.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday that the government plans to raise the price of gasoline purchased above existing subsidised quotas to 10,000 tomans per liter, while saying the timing has yet to be finalised, Iran International reported.

“We want to raise the third-tier quota, which is outside the existing quotas, for example from 5,000 tomans to 10,000 tomans,” Pezeshkian said in an interview with state television.

“The third-tier rate should be 10,000 tomans and not more than that,” he added.

Pezeshkian said the government would coordinate the timing and implementation with parliament and the judiciary before announcing the measure.

He also said Iran was facing gasoline supply constraints because import routes were blocked during the war.

“We are in a war and first we must accept that we are in wartime conditions,” he said. “The route is now blocked and goods are not coming in. One of those goods is gasoline.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Navy said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz remained closed to any ships attempting to transit without coordination with the Islamic Republic, according to a statement carried by the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency.

The force said US claims that the strait was open were “an obvious lie” aimed at controlling oil prices and covering up what it described as American failures, according to the statement.

“Islamic fighters’ control over this strategic waterway is completely decisive,” the statement said, adding that the strait remained closed “with full force” to all ships seeking passage without Iran’s approval.

The IRGC Navy said the restrictions would remain in place until what it called US military “aggression” against Iran ended and agreed commitments were implemented.