On the 12th, President Donald Trump claimed that the Strait of Hormuz remains open to civilian vessels, stating that the U.S. had carried out a very powerful airstrike against Iran for attacking civilian ships in the strait. This rejected the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s claim to re-block the strait. In telephone interviews with NBC and CNN on the same day, President Trump said, “We attacked them (Iran) very hard last night,” and “Hormuz is open. We bombed them mercilessly last night.”
The attack against Iran mentioned by President Trump refers to the airstrike carried out the previous day by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) against Iranian air and ground surveillance radars, missile and drone depots, missile and drone launch bases, and surface-to-air missile launchers. This was a response to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacking a Cypriot-flagged container ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time the previous day, marking the third instance of U.S. airstrikes against Iran in the past week.
In a phone interview, President Trump fiercely condemned Iran, calling them “really evil and crazy.” He continued, “We had our last meeting with them. They agreed to an agreement yesterday, and that was a perfect agreement for us,” adding, “It was no nuclear weapons, no one here and no one there.” President Trump further claimed, “They gave up everything, and then we walked out of the meeting room, but less than an hour later, they launched drones and dispatched ships,” stating, “So I said, ‘You are crazy. You are crazy.'”
These remarks by President Trump explain that U.S. airstrikes resumed because Iran attacked a civilian vessel passing through the strait again, despite negotiations and repeated agreements reached the previous day regarding the termination of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran and the situation that triggered the recent armed clashes between the two sides.