“The UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz – NOT Iran.” That was President Donald Trump’s line on June 10, 2026, as he announced that a secret American mission had moved more than 100 million barrels of oil and over 200 commercial ships through the waterway.
He raised it first at an Oval Office event, then repeated it online. By his account the operation took place last month, while the war with Iran was choking normal traffic. The ships went through “with no lights,” he said, because Iran’s forces “don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it.” At one point he put a number on a single night: “We took out the other night 22 ships.”
Trump said he had kept quiet for as long as he could. Silence “was very hard for me,” he told reporters, but he spoke up once he decided Iranian officials had worked out what was happening anyway.
What officials described
ABC News could not verify the barrel or ship counts. A U.S. official told the network the effort was closer to coordination than a formal escort: shippers could call U.S. Central Command and ask which routes were safe. That is a different thing from Project Freedom, the initiative Trump announced in early May and suspended two days later.
The New York Times had already reported that about 70 commercial ships were guided through the strait as of late May. Many of them switched off their tracking transponders to avoid being seen, ABC noted.
The arithmetic problem
Al Jazeera ran the numbers and found they did not fit. Before the war, about 20 million barrels moved through the strait every day, which would take roughly 700 vessels to carry. Tracking firms counted far fewer: nearly 80 ships by Windward’s tally, 142 vessels by Lloyd’s List, 264 transits by Kpler. Even the highest of those falls well short of what 100 million barrels would need.
Al Jazeera also questioned who runs the passage. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps holds operational control, it reported, and most ships have gone through with Iranian permission and paid tolls. Pakistan, India and Russia arranged transit for vessels from friendly countries.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright was asked about it in testimony to Congress the same day. He said he was unsure about the U.S. oil movements Trump described, though he acknowledged the military had helped some ships get through the narrower stretch of the strait.
Sources
- Trump claims more than 100 million barrels of oil, 200 ships have safely made way through Strait of Hormuz (ABC News)
- Did US sneak 100 million barrels of oil out of Hormuz, as Trump claims? (Al Jazeera)
