Trump admin accused of lying about Iran threats to avoid looking ‘weak’

While the Defense Department (DoD) claimed on Saturday that two U.S. Navy destroyers had successfully “transited the Strait of Hormuz” without incident, multiple reports suggested that the two ships were “forced to turn back” after receiving threats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), leading some critics to accuse the Trump administration of lying.

Shared on social media, the U.S. Central Command claimed that two U.S. Navy destroyers had begun operations in the Strait of Hormuz to clear the shipping waterway of sea mines placed by the IRGC. A U.S. official also refuted the claim that the United States had received threats from Iran, according to Axios’ Barak Ravid.

However, a regional intelligence official told Bloomberg on Sunday that the two U.S. Navy destroyers had, in fact, been “forced to turn back after encountering threats” from the IRGC, which “also launched [an unmanned aerial vehicle] in the direction of the vessels.” The official spoke with Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity, and went on to claim that the incident happened around 12:00 p.m. local time.

“Bloomberg reporting that the US claim of ‘operations to deal with mining’ is a lie,” wrote journalist and professor Adam Cochran on Saturday in a social media post on X to their nearly 300,000 followers.

“The ships attempted to navigate the Strait and turned back after receiving threats from the IRGC. The CENTCOM claim of an operation was a lie so that the US wouldn’t look weak.”

President Donald Trump repeated the claim that the U.S. military had started “the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz” in a social media post earlier on Saturday. Iranian state media, however, has “denied any crossing,” according to The Economic Times.