US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and had swept the strategic oil waterway for Iranian mines.
"Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "We've mine-swept the entire strait."
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to six that day, compared with a 10-day average of about 11 vessels, shipping data showed, amid fading hopes of a peace deal between the US and Iran.
Four commodity vessels, including two empty oil product tankers, entered the waterway, data from Kpler showed on Tuesday. Two vessels - a small tanker laden with liquefied petroleum gas and another carrying residual fuels - exited the Strait, the data showed.
In pre-war days, about 130 to 140 ships typically transited the strait.
On Monday, 25 vessels transited the Bab el-Mandeb strait on the Red Sea, broadly unchanged when compared with the 10-day average of nearly 24 ships, Kpler data showed.
Trump says Strait of Hormuz 'sort of open'
Last week, while signing an executive order in the White House, Trump said that the Strait of Hormuz was "sort of open right now."
"You know, we have a thing called the blockade, headed up by the US Navy, and we control it," he said. "But they can always shoot something."
"They always have something or drop a mine," he warned, "and if you have one mine sitting out there, you sort of mess things up because people don’t want to take their billion-dollar boats and accidentally get hit by a mine.”
Idan Kweller contributed to this report.