In August 2026, Iran’s government announced that it would only reopen the Strait of Hormuz if U.S. President Donald Trump admitted he lost the 2020 presidential election.
A claim asserting that Iran’s administration conditioned the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledging his defeat in the 2020 presidential election began circulating widely in August 2026.
On August 6, 2026, for instance, a Facebook user posted (archived): “In a major setback for Donald J. Trump, the government of Iran announced on Thursday that it would only reopen the Strait of Hormuz when he admits he lost the 2020 election.”
This narrative emerged while Trump was navigating heightened pressure to secure a diplomatic agreement regarding the Strait of Hormuz, all against the backdrop of a historically low public approval rating. Because Trump had a well-documented history of disputing the 2020 results before eventually conceding the point, some social media users mistakenly took the satirical report literally, prompting readers to reach out to Snopes for verification.
To determine the veracity of the claim, a preliminary search was conducted using platforms such as DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Bing. Had Tehran actually issued such a diplomatic demand, major news organizations like Reuters or The Associated Press would have covered it extensively, leaving a clear digital footprint.
No such evidence existed. There was a complete absence of legitimate news coverage indicating that Iran had made any such ultimatum tying the Strait of Hormuz to the 2020 election.
Instead, the claim originated from The Borowitz Report, a well-known publication specializing in political satire and parody. Humorist Andy Borowitz initially shared the premise on August 5 before publishing the full satirical article the following day.
The About page for the publication states:
I’ve been writing satirical news since I was eighteen. This represents either commitment to a genre or arrested development.
While Borowitz maintained a satirical column in The New Yorker for 25 years, he announced in 2023 that the magazine had discontinued the feature due to budgetary cutbacks.
This is not the first time satirical content from The Borowitz Report regarding Trump and Iran has been mistaken for real news. In July 2026, for example, Snopes addressed a fabricated story claiming Trump asserted his funeral attendance would surpass that of former Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died during a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation on February 28, 2026.
Sources
Borowitz, Andy. About – The Borowitz Report. https://www.borowitzreport.com/about. Accessed 9 July 2026.
Borowitz, Andy. Iran Says It Will Reopen Strait If Trump Admits He Lost in 2020. 6 Aug. 2026, https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/iran-says-it-will-reopen-strait-of.
Deng, Rae. ‘Did Trump Say His Funeral Crowd Would Be Bigger than Iranian Ayatollah’s? Don’t Be Fooled’. Snopes, 9 July 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-funeral-ayatollah/.
Finley, Ben, and MATTHEW LEE Leer en español. ‘A Deal with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz May Require a Compromise from Trump’. AP News, 7 Aug. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/iran-trump-strait-hormuz-diplomacy-stockpiles-0220ceb7904e16c30869c8fe4cf2a3db.
Gracia, Shanay, and Jocelyn Kiley. ‘Trump’s Job Approval Rating Is Low by Historical Standards’. Pew Research Center, 6 Aug. 2026, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/06/trumps-job-approval-rating-is-low-by-historical-standards/.
News, A. B. C. ‘A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Election Denial Claims, Which Republican Politicians Increasingly Embrace’. ABC News, https://abcnews.com/Politics/timeline-donald-trumps-election-denial-claims-republican-politicians/story?id=89168408. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026.
‘Trump Acknowledges Losing the 2020 Election “by a Whisker”‘. NBC News, 4 Sept. 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-acknowledges-lost-2020-election-whisker-rcna169526.