Trump says the US has begun “cleaning up” the Strait of Hormuz to do other countries a “favor” / Information on US warships that have crossed the strait
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States had begun the “cleaning process of the Strait of Hormuz” and verbally attacked again the countries that rejected his request to carry out a military operation against Iran on their own to unblock this essential corridor for the export of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, AFP, EFE and Agerpres agencies report.
“We are now beginning the process of cleaning up the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to countries around the world, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany and many others,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Incredibly, they don't have the courage or the will to do this on their own,” he claimed.
It is not clear what Trump means when he mentions “clearing” the strait, whether it is simply clearing any mines placed there by Iran or securing the area in the face of Iranian attacks on merchant shipping. According to the American publication Axios, citing a US official, several US Navy ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday.
In the same message, posted as US-Iranian talks take place in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Trump said of Iran that “their only card in hand is the threat that a ship could 'hit' one of their naval mines” in Hormuz. But he assured that the Iranian navy could no longer lay mines because “all 28 of their mine-laying ships are lying on the bottom of the sea” following the bombing campaign American-Israeli.
Trump also repeated an earlier comment that empty oil tankers “from many countries” are heading to the US to resupply.
In retaliation after the war waged against it by the United States and Israel, on February 28, Iran de facto blocked this shipping corridor essential to the export of oil and gas from the Gulf, threatening to attack any ship there with ties to the US, Israel and their allies.
Iran has agreed to unblock the Strait of Hormuz under the truce agreed overnight with the US for a two-week period, but in practice the strait remains blocked and the few ships that transit it do so only with the approval of Tehran, which considers continued Israeli bombing of Lebanon a violation of the truce.
Axios: US warships cross Strait of Hormuz for first time since conflict with Iran
Several ships of the US Navy crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, an American official told Axios, citing News.ro.
The move was not coordinated with Iran and is the first time US warships have crossed the strait since the start of the war, Axios reports.
The operation was aimed at increasing the confidence of commercial ships in crossing the strait, sources say. This took place at the moment when the peace negotiations between the two sides began in Pakistan.
“This was an operation that focused on freedom of navigation in international waters,” the US official said.
The official said the Navy ships crossed the strait from east to west to the Persian Gulf, then returned through the strait to the Arabian Sea.
The Iranian government would have qualified the crossing as a violation of the truce and would have threatened to attack the ships, according to reports in Iran's state media.
The reopening of the strait was a key provision in the US-Iran armistice agreement. The narrow waterway on Iran's southern coast is vital to the normal functioning of the global economy.
For several days after the armistice was announced, very few ships crossed the strait.
On Saturday morning there were reports that at least three supertankers had crossed the strait – a timid sign of movement, although it represents a small fraction of normal traffic. According to ship tracking data, most are Chinese, writes CNN.
A US official admitted earlier this week that the ships were not crossing the strait because they were intimidated by the Iranians.
On the other hand, according to some American officials quoted by The New York Times, Iran has failed to open the Strait of Hormuz to more intensive maritime traffic because it cannot locate all the mines it has placed in the strait and does not have the ability to remove them.
The first oil tankers to leave the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz
Three oil tankers passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, according to maritime traffic monitoring data, data according to which they would be the first oil tankers to leave the Persian Gulf after the truce agreed on Wednesday between the US and Iran, Reuters and Agerpres agencies report.
Thus, a Liberian-flagged oil tanker “Serifos” and Chinese-flagged oil tankers “Cospearl Lake” and “He Rong Hai” entered and left the “trial anchorage of the Strait of Hormuz” which bypasses the Iranian island of Larak on Saturday.
The transport capacity of each of these ships is about two million barrels of oil.
The oil tanker “Serifos”, carrying crude oil loaded from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in early March, is bound for the port of Malacca in Malaysia. The ship “Cospearl Lake” is loaded with Iraqi oil and “He Rong Hai” carries Saudi crude oil, the same data shows, the latter two being contracted by a Chinese company.
According to the United Arab Emirates, about 230 tankers loaded with oil are in the Persian Gulf ready to lift anchor as soon as the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.
