US Central Command has rejected a senior Iranian military commander's assertion that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exercises complete control over the Strait of Hormuz, Middle East Eye reported.
In a statement published on X, Centcom described claims that Iran had full control of the strategic waterway as false. The US military command also said Iran no longer had a navy because American forces had sunk it. The post was issued in response to the Iranian commander's claim about the IRGC's authority over the strait.
Centcom cited the recent movement of more than one billion barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz as evidence against the Iranian assertion. According to the command, the scale of those shipments demonstrated that Tehran did not control the passage. No further details were provided in the source material about the timeframe in which the oil crossed the strait or the vessels involved.
The US military said American forces had been assisting efforts to maintain the movement of commercial traffic through the waterway. The source material also said those forces were carrying out enforcement activity, but the supplied report did not provide further information about the measures involved.
The competing statements focus on control of a waterway described in the report as strategic. The Iranian military claim presented the IRGC as being in complete command of the strait, while Centcom pointed to continuing commercial oil traffic and the role of US forces as grounds for rejecting that account.
Neither the identity of the senior Iranian commander nor additional details of the commander's statement were included in the supplied material. Centcom's response, as reported by Middle East Eye, was limited to denying Iranian control, referring to the recent volume of oil shipments and describing the US role in helping commercial vessels continue to pass through the strait.
Reporting attribution: based on reporting by Middle East Eye — original source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/us-centcom-rejects-irgc-claim-complete-control-over-hormuz.