Iran tells Washington that Gulf energy sites share the same exposure

Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned on 7 September that energy plants on both sides of the Gulf sit inside the same target set. "Strike our assets and you get struck," he wrote on X, answering U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had called Iran's tanker fleet defenceless. Qalibaf said the oil and gas chain around the Strait of Hormuz is sprawling, accessible and exposed, and that American companies on those waters share the exposure. He added that Iran had already shown it could hit bases that, in his words, are no longer viable.

The statement followed weekend strikes on shipping by both the United States and Iran. Oil prices moved toward six-week highs on Monday. Transit counts through Hormuz are at their lowest since May. Senior security official Mohsen Rezaei said Tehran would announce a new restricted zone in the coming days and publish maps for a separate corridor through the strait. The zone, he said, would start where a U.S. naval blockade of Iran begins and run into parts of the Gulf. Ships that enter it would go on an Iranian sanctions list.

Rezaei tied the corridor to a political condition. Iran would treat Hormuz as open, he said, only when the United States stopped what Tehran calls sabotage, threats and attacks. Qalibaf is also Iran's lead negotiator, which makes the social-media warning part of the bargaining file rather than a side comment.

U.S. Central Command on 5 September released video of strikes on Iranian vessels and quoted Admiral Brad Cooper telling Tehran not to fire on American ships. Iran says its own attacks on U.S. forces are self-defence against a blockade and against hits on commercial ships. The fighting over the waterway has now lasted more than six months. No diplomatic track announced this week has closed it.

The practical risk is not only Iranian and American hulls. Refineries, loading terminals and fields in Gulf Arab states sit within missile and drone range of the same waters. Tehran has used that geography before as a deterrent message to governments that host U.S. forces. Qalibaf's wording puts those plants in the same sentence as Iranian tankers. Markets priced the sentence immediately. The restricted-zone maps, if they appear this week, will tell shipowners where Iran wants the next collision to be recorded.

Hormuz still carries a large share of seaborne crude. Each new restricted box on a chart forces insurers and skippers to choose between a sanctioned corridor and a longer route. Qalibaf's post does not open the strait and does not close it. It sets the price of the next U.S. strike as a hit on energy kit that is not Iranian.