U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he has instructed the U.S. Navy to engage and destroy any vessels laying naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
“There is to be no hesitation,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
He added that U.S. minesweeping operations in the strait would continue “at a tripled up level,” signaling an escalation in efforts to secure the vital shipping route.
Trump also ordered the U.S. military to “shoot and kill” Iranian small boats choking the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. military on Thursday seized another tanker associated with the smuggling of Iranian oil, ratcheting up a standoff with Iran a day after its paramilitary Revolutionary Guards took control of two vessels in the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
The Defense Department released video footage of U.S. forces on the deck of the Guinea-flagged oil tanker Majestic X, which was seized in the Indian Ocean.
“We will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” a Pentagon statement said.
Ship-tracking data showed the Majestic X in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia, roughly the same location as the oil tanker Tifani, earlier seized by American forces. It had been bound for Zhoushan, China.
The vessel previously had been named Phonix and had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2024 for smuggling Iranian crude oil in contravention of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
