TEHRAN — The Iranian people should no longer bear the cost of safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz for the rest of the world, a senior military adviser to Iran’s Leader of the Islamic Revolution said, as Tehran signals a shift in how it views the strategic waterway.
In an exclusive interview with NewsNation, Mohsen Rezaei, a senior military adviser to Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, made clear that Iran has provided free security and environmental protection to global shipping for 47 years — and that era is now over.
“Yes, we want to maintain the security of the Strait of Hormuz. We want to protect the environment of the Strait of Hormuz,” Rezaei said. “We must establish insurance mechanisms so that if incidents occur, ships that encounter problems are covered to reduce their risk. And when we provide all of this, these costs cannot come out of the pockets of the Iranian people. These costs must be collected from those who are transporting oil through this strait.”
Rezaei said Iran does not view the strait as a simple bargaining chip, but as a vital national interest and a matter of national security. He rejected any suggestion that the U.S. has the right to interfere in the waterway, which is Iran’s sovereign territory.
“No country — no country — is willing to let America interfere. And we, who are the owners of the strait — should we allow Americans to interfere?” he asked. “We have shown for 47 years that the Strait of Hormuz is open. But after the prolonged wars waged against us, we can no longer simply carry on as before.”
Rezaei also addressed Iran’s nuclear program, flatly denying that Tehran is pursuing an atomic bomb and pointing to U.S. intelligence assessments that have confirmed the same.
“When official American and other countries’ intelligence agencies say Iran has not been pursuing an atomic bomb, you ask us whether we are — and it’s clear we were not,” he said. “We have always, always declared this. We have always said we were not pursuing an atomic bomb.”
He also accused the Trump administration of insincerity in the current negotiations, which resumed last week in Switzerland with Qatari and Pakistani mediators. The talks come after two previous rounds were derailed by surprise American and Israeli attacks on Iran.
“We have still not seen any serious change in the behavior of Mr. Trump and his team,” Rezaei said. “We feel they are simply buying time from us. They want to manage America’s domestic issues — for example, to get inflation and the banking crisis under control, hold the elections, and then the games will be over.”
“We have yet to see a serious move, a turning point in American behavior,” he added. “Therefore, we have very little hope that this agreement will actually happen.”
Rezaei insisted that the U.S. must first accept Iran’s rights under international law before any deal can be reached.
“The first issue is that the American government must accept that the Iranian people have rights — rights recognized under international law, within which Iran operates,” he said. “America must accept these rights.”
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