Trump tells ship captains to use the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. conflict with Iran intensifies

Hundreds of tankers and container ships are idling in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman because they are unwilling to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without naval escorts or insurance coverage. On Wednesday, President Trump urged wary ship captains to go “full steam ahead” and sail through the critical waterway.

Dozens of other merchant vessels also remain trapped in ports inside the Persian Gulf because they can’t get out of the “kill zone” of the strait after Iran announced a de facto blockade of the chokepoint. Mr. Trump dismissed their concerns.

“I think they should use the strait. We took out just about all of their mine ships in one night,” Mr. Trump told reporters outside the White House. “Just about all of their navy is at the bottom of the sea.”

Asked whether his administration believes Iran has already released mines into the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump said, “We don’t think so.”

Later in the day, the president said of the war, “We’ve won, let me tell you, we’ve won.”

Mr. Trump gave his rosy assessment as the International Energy Agency decided to release 400 million barrels from strategic stockpiles  — the largest release in its history — to keep crude flowing around the world.

After almost two weeks of bombing runs on military sites in and around Tehran, the primary theater of the war has shifted to the Strait of Hormuz. Still, Pentagon officials said this week that they haven’t decided whether to provide naval escorts for commercial shipping through the area.

“For years, the Iranian regime has threatened commercial shipping and U.S. forces in international waters.

“Our mission is to end their ability to project power and harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, said in a message posted on his X account.

The U.S. has taken out more than 60 Iranian ships as part of a campaign hitting more than 5,000 targets inside Iran.

Still, at least three merchant vessels were attacked by Iran or Iranian proxies along the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. One ship, the Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree, reported a fire in the engine room that forced the crew to evacuate, according to local media reports.

Several news organizations reported a coordinated blitz of ballistic missiles from Iran and hundreds of smaller rockets launched from Lebanon toward Israel.

Israeli news sites said air defense systems shot down the ballistic missiles.

The Strait of Hormuz is often called “the world’s most important oil chokepoint” because of its impact on the global economy. Under normal conditions, the waterway handles about 20 million barrels per day of oil and refined products. That amounts to about 20% of total global oil consumption.

On Wednesday, the 32 members of the Paris-based IEA agreed to pull 400 million barrels of oil from its emergency stockpiles to help address economic disruptions stemming from the U.S. and Israeli conflict with Iran.

Export volumes of crude and refined petroleum products through the Strait of Hormuz are at less than 10% of preconflict levels. IEA members hold emergency stockpiles of more than 1.2 billion barrels, officials said.

“Oil markets are global, so the response to major disruptions needs to be global too,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale; therefore, I am very glad that IEA member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size.”

The Trump administration and its allies also faced questions about a missile strike on the first day of Operation Epic Fury that killed at least 175 people, mostly children.

According to multiple reports, the Tomahawk missile that hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was likely misdirected by U.S. Central Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency because of faulty intelligence. The school is in Minab, a city in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan. It is about 50 miles east of a major naval base in Bandar Abbas overlooking the Strait of Hormuz.

More critically, it is adjacent to the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex, which serves as headquarters for the Asif Brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

“Officials emphasized that there are important unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double-checked,” The New York Times reported.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon would say only that its inquiry into the strike was continuing. Bellingcat, a Dutch-based investigative journalism group specializing in open-source intelligence, said it had confirmed that a video uploaded by Iran’s state-owned Mehr News Agency shows a U.S. Tomahawk missile striking the school.

“The U.S. is the only participant in the war that is known to have Tomahawk missiles. Israel is not known to have Tomahawk missiles,” Bellingcat said in a report this week.

U.S. Central Command said Iran has stationed warships and military equipment inside civilian ports serving commercial maritime traffic. In that case, the facilities would lose protected status under international law and become legitimate military targets, Central Command said.

“This dangerous action risks the lives of innocent people,” the command said. “CENTCOM urges civilians in Iran to immediately avoid all port facilities where Iranian naval forces are operating.”

Iranian dockworkers, administrative personnel and crew members of commercial vessels should avoid Iranian warships and any military equipment in port areas, officials said.

“American forces will continue taking every feasible precaution to minimize harm to civilians,” U.S. officials said.