Tehran: The navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has targeted at least seven “violating” oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in the past five days, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The IRGC Navy has targeted more than one oil tanker each day, despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that “the Strait of Hormuz is open and under his country’s control,” it reported.
Citing MenchOsint, an independent military observer, Fars added that two oil tankers were exploded in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday — one at the waterway’s entrance and the other while exiting it.
MenchOsint also said that two Kuwaiti tankers, Al FUNTAS and KAZIMAH III, and three United Arab Emirates vessels, SINBAD, MERSIN PROSPERITY and AL RUWAIS, were struck in the strait over the previous four days, reports Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, Trump on Saturday said that the war with Iran would end “very quickly” and predicted oil prices would fall sharply once the conflict was over, as he portrayed Tehran as militarily and economically weakened.
Speaking to reporters after arriving in Texas and later during a visit to a Peterbilt Motors facility in Denton, Trump said Iran faced a choice over how the conflict would end.
“Iran will very soon be ending one way or the other,” Trump told reporters. “It’ll either just say, look, they have 301 percent inflation. They have no money, they have no currency. Their military has been defeated, their navy is gone, their air force is gone, everything’s gone.”
“And, one way or the other, it’s going to end very quickly. And when that ends, oil prices are going to drop like a rock,” he said.
Iran tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz on February 28, barring safe passage of vessels belonging to or affiliated with Israel and the United States following their joint strikes on Iranian territory.
(IANS)
