Iran’s President Calls to End the War as Washington Claims Hormuz

TEHRAN / WASHINGTON — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Friday, 21 August 2026, that the months-long war with the United States should be brought to an end now — “as we are in a position of power and dignity.”

He spoke at a meeting with doctors. State media and AFP carried the line. Al Jazeera published it on Saturday morning.

“It is better that we bring the war to an end now as we are in a position of power and dignity,” Pezeshkian said. He added that “the whole world acknowledges our victory” and that America had “attacked our schools, hospitals and infrastructure in violation of all regulations and is hated around the world.”

Those are Tehran’s sentences, not a scoreboard. The war that the United States and Israel opened on Iran in late February 2026 is in its sixth month. A June memorandum of understanding did not hold. Fighting and blockades resumed.

What each side says about Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is a finger of water between Iran and Oman. Before this war, about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied gas moved through it.

President Donald Trump has spent the past week claiming the waterway as an American fact. On 14 August he said that after Iran was “very badly defeated,” he would declare the strait “a territory of the United States.” On Friday, backing a Senate candidate, he said: “I view the Strait of Hormuz as an American territory right now.” He also told reporters the United States had “total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz, and that means well into it, the land areas.”

Iran’s reply has been consistent: the strait “will remain Iranian.” Tehran still keeps it partly shut. Washington keeps a naval counter-blockade on Iranian ports. Reuters reported in mid-August that ordinary traffic had slowed toward a standstill after further ship attacks. The US Navy, according to later reporting, has been running protected tanker convoys through the southern sector — five to ten million barrels a day, far below the old peacetime flow.

“Conquered” is a political word. The satellite photograph on this page is the waterway itself. Who issues papers for it is still a war.

Diplomacy on a thin line

Oman’s foreign minister spoke by phone with his Iranian counterpart on Friday about conditions for talks and about navigation in the strait. Trump said Iran “would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion.” The US Treasury was preparing a new sanctions round; Iran’s foreign ministry called the plan “economic terrorism.” China said sanctions would not settle the file.

Pezeshkian also said of an earlier memorandum: “They cannot find even a single clause in this agreement that indicates capitulation. All the commitments concern the other side.”

Why this paper files it

Ndigbo do not sit on the Gulf. They sit on the petrol queue. When Hormuz tightens, diesel into Apapa tightens, and the generator in Aba and the truck into Onitsha Main Market feel it before any communiqué from Washington. A six-month war over a strait is not distant colour. It is a price.

This newsroom will not pretend either capital has already won the water. It will record what each man said on the record: Pezeshkian wants the guns to stop while he can still call it dignity. Trump wants the strait named American. The tankers, and the markets that wait on them, will decide which sentence was the louder.