President Trump said the US has total control over the strait of Hormuz (R) “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
HERE IS THE LATEST –
- President Trump said Wednesday the U.S. has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, a claim Iran has disputed and that comes as ships are hesitant to pass through the waterway. “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform
- The number of vessels tracked transiting the Strait of Hormuz fell to a one-week low of eight, according to data reported by the Reuters news agency. About 150 ships a day passed through the vital waterway before the war started on Feb. 28.
- Six people on a vessel in the Red Sea were killed by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, Yemen’s coast guard said Tuesday.
Lebanese prime minister criticizes Israel’s “systematic destruction” in southern Lebanon
Lebanon decries Israeli demolition of homes in areas occupied after ceasefire
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Wednesday condemned Israel’s “systematic destruction” in the country’s south as a violation of international law, as Israel’s defense minister said its military was “destroying all the houses” there.
Salam said Israeli “attacks, incursions, demolitions and the systematic destruction of homes,” infrastructure, government buildings and places of worship “represent a serious violation of the principles and rules of international law and international humanitarian law.”
Claiming that villages and towns “are entirely ‘military facilities’ does not stand up to any logic and cannot be used as an excuse for destroying them, displacing their inhabitants and preventing them from returning,” he said in a statement.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz visited southern Lebanon on Wednesday, vowing to keep troops in a so-called “security zone” there and saying the Israeli military was “destroying the underground infrastructure” in the area and “destroying all the houses.”
The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the war on March 2 by attacking Israel, which responded with heavy airstrikes and a ground invasion that Lebanese authorities say have killed more than 4,300 people. and wounded over 11000.
A framework deal reached in late June between Lebanon and Israel involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in “pilot zones.”
When asked about Katz’s remarks, a U.S. State Department official responded in an email that the U.S. “expects all parties to act in a manner consistent with the framework they agreed to, and Israel clearly stated that it has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon. A permanent military presence in South Lebanon is not consistent with the commitments made in the framework, or the long-term peace and security of both states.”
Trump’s secret plane switch took place within a day of credible Iranian missile threat
Last month’s elaborate ruse that saw President Trump secretly move from Air Force One to another plane by way of a catering truck took place within a day of U.S. and Turkish intelligence picking up on an Iranian plot to fire a missile at the presidential jet, CBS News has learned.
The decision to shift Mr. Trump to a different plane was made while the annual NATO conference was underway in Ankara, according to two law enforcement officials and a U.S. official. The president had flown into the Turkish capital on a newly retrofitted Boeing 747 donated by the government of Qatar, but an older white-and-blue jetthat has served as Air Force One since the 1990s was also on the ground as a support aircraft.
Ahead of Mr. Trump’s July 8 departure from the summit, the National Security Agency, the CIA and Turkey’s MIT intelligence service picked up streams of information about a credible plot by Iran to fire a surface-to-air missile at Air Force One, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive matters.
There were also reports of a team in Turkey tasked with firing the surface-to-air missile at the plane, the U.S. officials said. But after more probes, no team was detected.
As the U.S.-Iran war nears the six-month mark, there is a significant ongoing threat from Iran to kill Mr. Trump, according to the officials.
U.S. forces to complete Iraq pullout by Sept. 30, officials say
The U.S. military is on track to pull all of its forces out of Iraq by the end of September, officials said Wednesday, marking the end of a presence that started with the 2003 invasion against Saddam Hussein.
Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller U.S.-led operations against the Islamic State group.
U.S. troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases there have regularly come under attack since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the U.S. Central Command, on Wednesday. Al-Zaidi said in a statement afterward that he had affirmed Sept. 30 as the “fixed and final date for ending the military mission of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and completing the departure of its forces.”
A U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. expects to complete its pullout by Sept. 30, but declined to say how many troops remain in Iraq or where they would be redeployed.
Last month, an American soldier was killed during the controlled detonation of an Iranian drone in Iraq. Six more U.S. service members in Iraq were killed in March when a refueling plane crashed.
Iran rejects Trump’s claims the Strait of Hormuz is under U.S. control
Iran is countering President Trump’s claim earlier Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz is under U.S. control, though they did not refer to the president by name.
“Claims and repeated posts by U.S. officials that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer blocked do not change the reality: the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted,” the Persian Gulf Strait Authority said in a statement on X.
The Persian Gulf Strait Authority was the agency set up to manage transit through the strait — and collect a toll — soon after the war began.
Traffic in the strait has slowed to a crawl in recent weeks. Tuesday’s tally of eight vessels fell below a 10-day average of about 12, for the lowest daily count since Aug. 5, according to Kpler data.
Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier that the U.S. has “total control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
“I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it,” he wrote.
