U.S. President Trump calls claims of ships struck in the Strait of Hormuz ‘false propaganda to drive up oil prices’

[Financial News] With the November midterm elections approaching, U.S. President Donald Trump said that claims recently made by the Iranian government that ships had been struck in the Strait of Hormuz were untrue. He said Iran was engaging in false propaganda to drive up global oil prices ahead of the U.S. elections.
On the 22nd (local time), Trump posted on the social media platform Truth Social and stressed, “Iran is doing everything it can to drive up oil prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.” Trump also stressed, “They are even making up false claims of successful attacks (on oil tankers), mines, and everything else. That’s because more oil is currently passing through the Strait of Hormuz than before the conflict began.”
Trump also cited in his Truth Social post an article published the previous day by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The article said that oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf region were exporting more oil than before the Iran War, aided by U.S. tanker escorts and a transshipment policy that delivers oil beyond the Strait of Hormuz.
Just before Trump posted, the public affairs office of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy issued a statement claiming that seven ships had caught fire in the Persian Gulf. In a statement on the 22nd, it claimed that, after monitoring and tracking four ships with a history of using illegal routes, it had detected them illegally transshipping oil cargo in the northern Persian Gulf. It then said the four ships had been attacked simultaneously. Earlier, in a statement on the 21st, the IRGC claimed that three ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz had violated Iranian regulations and taken another route, where they struck mines and caught fire.
In a post on the 22nd, Trump criticized Iran, saying, “(The Iranian regime) is killing protesters and everyone else who gets in its way,” and, “It is a truly evil regime, and I only hope the American people and the world understand how evil they are.”
He claimed, “In less than seven months (since the Iran War began), 75,000 protesters have lost their lives. The world and the ‘stupid Democrats’ don’t even seem to care about this.” Trump did not disclose the source of the figure of 75,000. In August, he claimed that “52,000 (Iranian protesters) had died over five months.”
 

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