WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that a new military task force set up to choke Iran’s land and sea trade was “in full force and effect”, hours after Iran’s foreign minister told Washington to accept Tehran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face war.
“Task Force Iron Gate is in full force and effect in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Coupled with history’s greatest Naval Blockade, very little gets into, or out of, Iran!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The task force: Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of US Central Command, ordered the formation of Task Force Iron Gate on Saturday. Its team of about 20 civilian and military staff is meant to stop Iran moving “advanced weapons systems, dual-use technologies, sanctioned materials, and illegal revenue streams” across its land borders and the Caspian Sea, extending on land the naval blockade of Iranian ports that the US announced in July. The blockade has stopped Iran exporting more than $25 billion of crude oil, according to Central Command. Iran has land borders with seven countries, including Pakistan.
Trump’s post followed a warning on Sunday from Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. “American voters have made their choice. Time for the White House to make its own,” Araghchi wrote, saying Iran’s two-day proposal to reopen Hormuz stood if the US met its conditions, and that otherwise Iran’s forces would “rain down hell”.
Talks are still going on behind the scenes. Vice President JD Vance has spent the past two weeks speaking almost every day to Field Marshal Asim Munir and Qatar’s prime minister about a new ceasefire, and the mediators have discussed a working-level meeting between US and Iranian officials that has not yet taken place. US officials say the military is ready to resume strikes at short notice.
