Did US sneak 100 million barrels of oil out of Hormuz, as Trump claims?

Live on television, President Donald Trump, sitting in the Oval Office, told reporters on Wednesday that the United States has been sneaking millions of barrels of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz despite tensions defying Iran’s restrictions on transit through the waterway.

That is why, Trump claimed, oil prices have hovered around $90 a barrel in recent days, instead of staying above $100 a barrel as was the case in the early weeks of the US-Israel war on Iran.

The narrow, strategic waterway — which hosts 20 percent of the world’s energy flows — has largely been shut since early March after the US and Israel attacked Tehran.

In early March, Iran said it would not allow passage to any ships through the strait. Then it agreed to allow limited ships from select “friendly” countries through, on the condition that they negotiated their transit with Iran. On April 13, five days after agreeing to a ceasefire with Tehran, the US imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ships and ports.

With the US naval blockade on one side and the Iranian authorities on the other, only a few ships have been able to cross the Strait of Hormuz.

Against that backdrop, has the US indeed been able to get ships carrying millions of barrels of oil out of the strait without Iran’s permission?

On Wednesday, at the White House, Trump said the US has “been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it”.

He added that Iran was blindsided by the US moves. “We took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights, because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it [Iran’s strategic infrastructure].”