President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. military is secretly helping 200 commercial ships and more than 100 million barrels of oil transit the Strait of Hormuz.
“The reason this effort was so successful is because the United States, not Iran, controls the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Their military will be defeated and their economy will be lost.”
President Trump revealed the strategy in remarks to reporters in the Oval Office early Wednesday. He credited clandestine exports with keeping oil prices around $90 per barrel, rather than soaring to more than $200 per barrel.
However, Helima Croft, global head of product strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said ship traffic through Hormuz remained well below pre-war levels. Croft told CNBC in an interview that the world loses significant amounts of oil every day.
Before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, about 20% of the world’s oil supply, or 20 million barrels a day, passed through Hormuz. Traffic in the strait plummeted as Iran retaliated by attacking ships and mining sea lanes. The virtual closure of Hormuz Island resulted in the loss of more than 1 billion barrels of oil, the largest supply disruption in history.
JPMorgan said last week that more oil may be passing through Hormuz than has been disclosed. The bank estimates that about 2 million barrels a day could be leaking from tankers whose transponders were switched off.
“Despite the continued naval blockade and the sharp reduction in commercial traffic, an alarming amount of crude oil and petroleum products appears to still be passing through the Strait,” JPMorgan analysts said in a June 4 note.
In May, President Trump announced a mission called “Project Freedom” to protect a tanker that ran aground in the Persian Gulf, then abruptly canceled it. U.S. officials have since hinted that the navy is covertly supporting ships transiting Hormuz, but they have not disclosed the scale of the operation.
The U.S. military is not escorting the ship, a defense official told CNBC last week. The official said the military was communicating and coordinating with ships attempting to pass freely and safely through Hormuz.
U.S. Central Command had indicated that troops were protecting the ship from attack. The newspaper said last week’s clashes between the United States and Iran began when the Iranian government fired a drone at “civilian sailors who were legitimately transiting regional waters.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged to Congress last week that the United States was responding to Iranian attacks on commercial ships. Rubio said Iranian drones have low precision and can hit any part of the ship, risking creating an ecological disaster.
“If they don’t shoot these ships, we won’t shoot them, but we have to respond,” Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
