According to US President Donald Trump, the US military has supported oil tankers and other merchant ships in a “secret mission” to transit the Strait of Hormuz. He ordered this last month, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, without providing further details about the support.
“Today I am pleased to announce that these efforts have resulted in more than 100 MILLION barrels of oil crossing the Strait and entering the open market,” he wrote. According to the International Energy Agency, an average of 20 million barrels of crude oil and oil products per day were transported through the strait last year.
Trump further wrote that more than 200 merchant ships had safely crossed the strait. There was initially no independent confirmation of his information. The president had previously spoken vaguely to reporters at the White House about the US actions and said that he could now talk openly about it because Iran had found out.
Report: Ships switched off transponders
The New York Times reported about a week and a half ago, citing US officials, that US forces had helped coordinate the passage of dozens of merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The report mentioned around 70 ships in the previous three weeks. Most ships had turned off their transponders to avoid being detected while passing through, the newspaper quoted US officials as saying.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to a military base in Florida that the “Freedom Project” was never stopped but continued in secret. The US launched this initiative at the beginning of last month to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic. Shortly afterwards, Trump surprisingly announced that he would suspend US operations to ensure the safe passage of ships through the strait “for a short time”.
Trump made no reference to the initiative by name in his post. With regard to what he described as a covert US mission, he claimed: “This extremely successful operation is due to the fact that the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz – NOT Iran.” (DPA)
