Trump Declares Total Control of Hormuz on the Day Eight Ships Crossed It
Two commercial trackers put Tuesday’s transits at eight and eleven against a pre-war norm of 130 to 140 a day. Tehran says the strait remains closed on its own terms.
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday 12 August that “The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT!”, adding that the naval blockade is being called “A WALL OF STEEL,” a phrase he attributed to “everyone.” Reuters carried the post verbatim. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews the previous evening, he told ABC News: “Iran is going fine, going just absolutely fine. We totally control the Strait of Hormuz,” then added, “I don’t trust Iran. I’m the last person to trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly. And at some point, maybe they’ll do something and then they get blown away.” Mohsen Rezaee, the newly appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tuesday the strait remains closed unless Washington changes its behaviour and accepts Iranian conditions for ending the war.
The traffic data do not settle the argument in either direction. Kpler counted eight vessels in the strait on Tuesday, the lowest daily total since 5 August, with seven of the eight entering on the Iranian route and a single coal carrier exiting. LSEG counted eleven for the same day, down from fourteen. Reuters shipping data had put Monday 10 August at six vessels against a ten-day average of about eleven. The pre-war baseline, before Iran moved to close the waterway after 28 February, was roughly 130 to 140 ships a day. Lloyd’s List Intelligence, in its Strait of Hormuz Brief of 12 August, logged 45 transits for 3–9 August against 63 the week before, and 33 in the week of 13–19 July. Iran’s foreign ministry rejected Trump’s claim on Wednesday without naming him, per CBS News.
Assessment: Control of a waterway is measurable, and both parties are describing the same near-empty channel as proof of their own position. Washington can point to a blockade that is holding; Tehran can point to a strait nobody is using. The discrepancy between Kpler’s eight and LSEG’s eleven for a single day is a reminder that even the neutral instrument here is imprecise at low volumes — with a handful of hulls, one definitional choice moves the figure by a third. Watch the weekly Lloyd’s series rather than the daily counts, and note that its own 5 August brief carried two irreconcilable numbers for the same window. Nobody has published a clean picture.