US President Donald Trump said Washington quietly moved at least 87 oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz under the cover of darkness while Iranian forces remained unaware of the operations.
“We’d leave at 1 o’clock in the morning, all lights off, and we’d have our navy destroyers going alongside,” Trump told Axios in an interview aired Friday.
Trump said the operations were possible because the US military had “knocked out” Iran’s radar and defensive systems earlier in the conflict.
For more than a month, he said, “nobody knew” where the oil being transported through the waterway originated.
The remarks come after weeks of disruption to global energy markets following the US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began Feb. 28.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently said that “Project Freedom” had successfully escorted 125 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
