The White House confirmed Tuesday that the Knuckle-Brained Fart Lozenge has directed aides to evaluate renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself. The request arrived less than a day after American munitions struck a wedding in Sirk county in southern Iran.
Local health officials said the strike killed five people and wounded 68. They said one of the dead was a four-year-old child.
BBC and the New York Times independently verified video of the aftermath. The fragments carried a U.S. ordnance code.
The administration did not dispute the figures. A spokesperson for the Office of Strategic Waterway Identity called the renaming 'a long overdue correction.'
'When a vessel transits the world’s most vital energy corridor, it should know whose stability made the passage possible,' the spokesperson said. 'This is about clarity.'
The Office of Strategic Waterway Identity was created in February and had not previously been tasked with naming any waterway. The Pentagon confirmed Iranian forces had responded by attacking sites in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Pentagon did not confirm reports of U.S. casualties at Camp Titan in Jordan, which Iranian accounts described as a logistics hub. A Pentagon spokesperson said casualty figures would be released 'once the branding review is complete.' He added that the review would not delay the strait announcement.
The former president first raised the idea in a social media post. He asked whether the waterway should be changed 'to the former president Strait' and noted it would be 'hotter than ever before.'
Military historians said the last attempt to rename a contested strait after a sitting U.S. president was abandoned in 1973. That effort stalled after the Navy could not locate the body of water on a map.
Maritime analysts noted the United States does not control the strait. They said this fact had not yet reached the Office of Strategic Waterway Identity.
Iranian officials began circulating billboards in Tehran. The billboards showed the former president hiding in a catering container with a cheeseburger and a soda beneath the words 'the former president hiding.' Iranian state media called the campaign 'coastal mapping updates.'
At a Senate hearing, a senator asked whether renaming a strait after the president would improve shipping insurance rates. A Transportation Department official said the move 'would signal confidence to underwriters.'
The official added that the United States had begun printing tourism brochures for the renamed corridor. A sample page described the waterway as a 'gateway to stability and self-guided missile tours.'
The administration said it would make a final decision after the next round of strikes.
The Office of Strategic Waterway Identity issued a statement Tuesday evening. It said the agency had received one public comment on the proposal, from a cargo ship captain who wrote, 'Please stop.' The agency classified the comment as 'broad stakeholder support.'
