Trump’s ‘impenetrable’ Hormuz blockade claim remains unproven

Shipping estimates indicate severe restrictions on Iranian crude exports, but do not establish that the US blockade at Hormuz is “impenetrable”, as Donald Trump described it. The announced restriction targets Iranian-port traffic, not all shipping through the strait.

In a post dated 13 October 2026 in the Trump’s Truth archive, Trump celebrated the US Navy’s “251 years” and hailed an “impenetrable Steel Wall” as “another Historic Achievement”. The birthday message named no target country, provided no enforcement figures and announced no new order.

Trump’s earlier remarks and US Central Command’s announcements point to the Iranian-port blockade as the operation being praised. A CENTCOM release dated 12 April, reproduced by Seapower magazine, announced a blockade starting the following day against ships of all nationalities entering or leaving Iranian ports. It expressly said vessels passing through Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports would not be impeded.

There is substantive evidence of restrictions on crude exports. Reuters reported on 13 October, in a story republished by EnergyNow, that commodity data firm Vortexa estimated Iranian seaborne crude exports had fallen to zero in the second week of September and remained there as of 5 October. That followed a 14-day average of 230,000 barrels a day at the start of September. The estimate concerns crude oil, not every petroleum product, and its measurement cutoff precedes Trump’s post.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which advocates sanctions and continued pressure on Iran, reported a different crude-oil measure. Its 13 October update said it had not tracked a crude-laden tanker that successfully departed the Gulf of Oman and avoided US enforcement since 12 July. That conditional tracking result and Vortexa’s export estimate use different criteria and periods; they do not establish one continuous zero-export record since July.

The group also reported product movements: around nine small tankers carrying Iranian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and naphtha had passed the blockade line since the operation resumed. It identified APOLLO OCEAN as departing the Gulf of Oman with Iranian LPG on 12 October, the day before the birthday message.

An earlier USNI News report, published on 9 October, quoted Lloyd’s List analyst Tomer Raanan describing small quantities of LPG leaving Iran through ship-to-ship transfers. That supports the broader distinction between crude and product movements, rather than confirming the later APOLLO OCEAN departure.

CENTCOM’s own account describes substantial enforcement. In a 10 October release carried by Forth, the command said the blockade had resumed on 14 July. It reported turning back 135 ships, disabling four commercial vessels and destroying ten tankers it linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ shadow network over the three-month period. It also said a US fighter had disabled the propulsion of the Panama-flagged cargo vessel Ocean Molica in the Gulf of Oman that day without harming its crew. The release’s counts do not give a complete total of attempted passages, so they cannot establish an enforcement percentage.