Iran Claims It Hit Seven Tankers in Hormuz. Trump Says Tehran Is Faking Hits to Spike Oil Before the Midterms

Iran's Revolutionary Guard went on state television Thursday claiming it had hit seven oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz overnight: four struck on purpose, three more supposedly wrecked by sea mines. Oil jumped about 4%, with Brent crude touching $113 a barrel, its highest since May, CBS News reported.

President Trump wasn't buying it. "Iran is doing everything they can to drive up the price of Oil prior to the U.S. Midterm Election," he wrote on Truth Social late Thursday morning. "They are even making up fake hits, mines, and everything else, because more Oil is coming through the Hormuz Strait now than it did even prior to the beginning of the Conflict."

What Iran actually claimed

Every detail came from Tehran. The IRGC Navy said it "monitored and pursued four violating vessels" doing ship-to-ship oil transfers in the Gulf, and that "all four ships were hit simultaneously and are burning," per CBS. Three others, it said, "suffered accidents and caught fire after striking mines." No ship names, no casualties. The Associated Press said it couldn't independently confirm the claims.

The targets tell you the motive. Every ship Iran named was on the southern lane hugging Oman's coast, the corridor the U.S. military protects to keep Gulf oil moving. The IRGC called that lane "illegal" and threatened to take the fight "to the bases of the aggressors in the region" if ships keep using it.

Trump's numbers hold up

A minute later, the president reposted a Wall Street Journal headline: "More Oil Is Now Coming Out of the Persian Gulf Than Before the Iran War." The data behind it comes from ship tracker Kpler: Middle East oil flows averaged more than 24 million barrels a day in the week through Oct. 18, above the prewar level of 23.3 million, the Journal reported.

That's the work of a U.S.-run system. Tankers run the strait at night under American air cover, hand their cargo to bigger ships off Oman, and turn around for more. "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don't control the strait. We do," a U.S. official told Axios when the corridor first came to light in August.

Tehran has been talking down that flow for weeks. An IRGC adviser claimed this month that only about 10 ships a day get through, against 125 before the war, Reuters reported, even as Kpler showed Gulf exports topping prewar levels on 14 days in September.

Why Iran wants $113 oil

Think of a shop owner who can't sell anything, so he spends his time scaring customers away from the store across the street. Iran's own oil is locked up. Thursday marked 100 days since the U.S. reinstated its naval blockade, which has kept at least $25 billion of Iranian crude off the market, Central Command said. The shadow fleet of tankers Iran had been selling from ran dry in mid-October, Kpler told the Journal, per CBS. Iranian loadings fell from about 2 million barrels a day in March to roughly a quarter million in August, Fox News reported.

With nothing to sell, Tehran's only lever left is fear, and fear moves prices. U.S. diesel has hit a record national average of $6.23 a gallon, AAA data cited by Fox News shows. Twelve days before Americans vote, a regime that chants "Death to America" knows exactly whom high gas prices are meant to hurt.

What comes next

Trump tied the oil games to the regime's brutality. "They continue to kill protestors, and anyone else that happens to be in their way," he wrote, saying 75,000 protesters "lie dead in less than seven months" and that "the World, and the Dumocrat Party, seem not to care." His bottom line, in capitals: "IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON."

He has also said he's done talking. "We're not negotiating with them," Trump said Thursday. "We are gonna have something, one way or the other. It'll happen fairly soon." The U.S. and Israel have already drawn up a three-day strike plan he has promised not to use before the Nov. 3 election.

Until then, the fight is over the price at the pump. Iran is betting that a scary headline out of Tehran costs Republicans more than a full shipping lane costs Iran. Trump just called the bet.