Donald Trump’s dramatic Oval Office boast about a covert nighttime operation sneaking oil out from under Iran’s nose turned out to be anything but secret.
The president made the claim Wednesday morning, telling reporters he had been quietly steering oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz—and that Iran was only finding out about it at that very moment.
“I can say it now. Something you didn’t know,” Trump, 79, boasted. “Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran — until right now.”
That may well have been the case, but only if the Iranians don’t read The New York Times, which had reported on the exact same operation nearly 11 days earlier, on May 31.
According to a senior U.S. military official, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, Trump was describing an American effort to guide commercial vessels through the narrow waterway. While the ships have been switching off their transponders to avoid detection, the operation was far from secret—U.S. Central Command had already shepherded around 70 commercial ships through the strait before the Times first reported it. That number has since climbed to more than 200.
Trump also described the maneuver in overly dramatic terms. “We took out, the other night, 22 ships, late at night, with no lights, because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it,” he said. Later that day, on social media, he claimed the operation had put more than 100 million barrels of oil onto the open market—a figure that could not be independently verified.
U.S. officials have declined to specify what types of vessels made the crossings or the exact routes taken, though one official indicated at least some traffic avoided the Iranian coastline. Shipping analysts say the guided crossings appear to follow routes closer to Oman. Before the war, around 3,000 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz each month.
The episode comes as the conflict with Iran spirals. As the Daily Beast reported Wednesday, Trump issued an ominous threat against Tehran on Truth Social the same day—warning Iran would “pay the price” for failing to agree to a peace deal—after both countries exchanged fire following Iran’s shooting down of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter near the strait on Monday.
Trump also told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst he is “getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges.” CNN analysis found Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions since the April 7 ceasefire that the war would end any day now.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
