President Trump said on Friday that the US Navy was acting “like pirates” while enforcing the blockade against Iran, comments that affirm Tehran’s characterization of the US military action, which has involved seizing ships and Iranian oil.
“We … land on top of it and we took over the ship,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters during a rally in Florida while discussing an Iranian cargo ship the US military fired on and boarded in the Gulf of Oman.
We took over the cargo, took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business. Who would have thought we were doing that? We’re like pirates. We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates, but we’re not playing games,” he added.
Esmaeil Baqaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Trump’s comments were an acknowledgment of the criminal nature of the US blockade.
“The President of the United States has openly described the unlawful seizure of Iranian vessels as ‘piracy,’ brazenly boasting that ‘we act like pirates.’ This was no verbal slip. It was a direct and damning admission of the criminal nature of their actions against international maritime navigation,” Baqaei wrote on X.
“The international community, UN Member States, and the UN Secretary-General must firmly reject any normalization of such blatant violations of international law,” the Iranian spokesman added.
