{"id":262684,"date":"2026-06-11T01:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/262684\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:19:11","slug":"trumps-secret-mission-to-ferry-oil-past-iran-was-widely-disclosed-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/262684\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s \u2018Secret Mission\u2019 to Ferry Oil Past Iran Was Widely Disclosed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">It was a dramatic moment. President Trump seemed to be disclosing, on live television, a clandestine mission that involved spiriting away millions of barrels of oil, right under Iran\u2019s nose. In Mr. Trump\u2019s telling, the mission was so secretive that the Iranians were learning about it only at that very moment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">\u201cI can say it now. Something you didn\u2019t know,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters from his seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning. \u201cDo you know we\u2019ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn\u2019t know about it? Iran \u2014 until right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">\u201cWe took out, the other night, 22 ships, late at night, with no lights, because they don\u2019t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">As often happens with Mr. Trump, the truth was less dramatic. According to a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the president was referring to an American effort to steer the passage of dozens of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">While the operation was surreptitious enough \u2014 the U.S.-guided vessels have been turning off their transponders to avoid detection when crossing the narrow waterway \u2014 it could hardly have been news to Iran. Late last month, The New York Times <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/31\/business\/us-military-guides-strait-of-hormuz.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published an article<\/a> about the effort, reporting that U.S. Central Command had shepherded around 70 commercial ships through the strait.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">The number of vessels steered through the strait is now more than 200 in a little over a month, the military official said. Before the war, traffic through the waterway was typically about 3,000 ships per month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">U.S. officials have declined to say what type of vessels were going through the strait clandestinely and what route they took, but one official indicated that at least one route was not close to the Iranian coastline. Ships passing near Iran without obtaining Iranian approval face the threat of an almost-certain attack by Iranian drones or missiles. Shipping analysts say the U.S.-guided crossings appear to follow routes that are closer to Oman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Later on Wednesday, the president claimed on social media that this \u201csecret mission\u201d that he authorized last month had resulted in more than 100 million barrels of oil reaching the open market. That claim could not be immediately verified independently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a dramatic moment. President Trump seemed to be disclosing, on live television, a clandestine mission that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,1452,14670,9,24,63,5007,35553,62208,1069,5251,1876],"class_list":["post-262684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-donald-j","tag-iran","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","tag-ships-and-shipping","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-trump","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}