The US says shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has significantly increased in recent weeks.
Two US officials told CNN that 40 commercial ships carrying some 18 million barrels of oil passed through the strait under US military escort on Tuesday, in what would be a new wartime record.
Trump gave a similar figure on Monday, saying the US Navy was helping some 30 ships pass through Hormuz every night. He later said the waterway was “under USA control”.
In terms of oil, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “at least 10 million barrels” were getting through the strait each day, with between 15 million and 17 million on Tuesday.
The assessment comes after US CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper claimed last week that the US military had cleared Hormuz’s transit lanes of sea mines.
Before the war began, an average of around 100 ships and 20 million barrels of oil are estimated to have passed through the waterway each day.
The latest ship-tracking data paints a different picture than the US claims, with far fewer vessels recorded as transiting the strait.
According to marine analytics firm Kpler, just six vessels crossed the strait on Wednesday, 11 on Tuesday and five on Monday. It put the 10-day average at 13 vessels per day.
Other ship-trafficking services show a similar pattern. Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded an average of around 12 transits per day from August 26 to September 1, though the latest data may be incomplete “due to a lag in identifying dark transits”, said the firm’s maritime intelligence and research director, Bridget Diakun. This means that some ships are switching off their tracking beacons.
From August 17-23, Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded “about 14 non-Iranian-linked ships each day”, Diakun told Al Jazeera.
All these figures are far lower than the US claim that 40 ships transited the strait on Tuesday.