Iran threatens US energy assets, declares Gulf exclusion zone

Iran has declared it possesses the full capability to strike US Navy vessels enforcing an economic blockade on Iranian shipping and announced plans for a new maritime exclusion zone stretching across the Persian Gulf, marking what Tehran describes as a shift from defense to offensive operations.

The escalation follows a series of tit-for-tat attacks between Iranian and US forces. On Saturday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had fired ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and destroyer, though Washington said none of the missiles struck their targets. US forces subsequently hit three Iranian oil tankers, prompting US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to warn that further Iranian attacks on American ships would be met with the destruction of additional Iranian tankers.iranintl

Threats Against Energy Infrastructure

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament speaker and head of its negotiating team with Washington, said after the exchanges that "the rules of the game have changed" and that any future attack on Iranian interests would face "a faster, heavier and more painful response". On Monday, Ghalibaf escalated further by directly threatening US oil and gas companies operating in the region. "The oil and gas chain here is sprawling, accessible, and exposed," he wrote. "Strike our assets and you get struck".english.aawsat+2

Iranian lawmaker Mojtaba Zarei described the new posture as one based on "pre-emptive operations" aimed at breaking the blockade, writing that the withdrawal of US warships from the range of Iranian ballistic missiles would not end the confrontation.iranintl

A New Maritime Order

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, announced on state television Sunday that Iran considered the Strait of Hormuz closed and would establish a "prohibited zone" extending from the US blockade line into the Persian Gulf. Any vessel entering the zone with the intent to transit the Strait would be placed on an Iranian sanctions list, he said. Rezaei added that Iran and Oman had agreed on maps for a new shipping corridor through the Strait, to be signed in the coming days.iranwire+3

On Tuesday, Rezaei posted on X that "economic warfare will be met by a maritime exclusion zone across the Persian Gulf to the blockade perimeter" and that Iran's "operational posture toward US warships and bases has been fundamentally recalibrated".nationthailand

The White House said Monday that the Strait of Hormuz remained open and under US control, while the US military said it had redirected 94 commercial vessels, disabled three, and boarded two as of September 7.iranintl+1

A Risky Calculation

The strategy has drawn both support and skepticism inside Iran. Hardliners celebrated the missile launches as evidence that US warships were now vulnerable, while critics questioned whether Iran, which lacks a functioning blue-water navy, could sustain the escalation it was threatening. One former parliamentary security committee chairman, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, warned that attacks on tankers could invite retaliation against Iran's own energy infrastructure, writing: "What we are seeing is not war, but the killing of a nation and a civilisation".iranintl

The emerging confrontation leaves Tehran navigating a narrow path — attempting to raise the economic and military costs for Washington without triggering a level of retaliation its weakened infrastructure cannot absorb.