US President Donald Trump, through his account on the “Truth Social” platform, published an artificial intelligence-generated image of an Iranian oil tanker, showing US forces detaining the tanker off the Iranian coast.
Trump accompanied the photo with a comment in which he said: “It is our oil tanker now!”
The picture shows Trump holding the American flag with both hands and raising it, while behind him stands a soldier aiming his weapon on board the oil tanker, while the Iranian flag appears to have been dropped from its deck.
An American aircraft carrier also appears behind the tanker in the waters opposite Iran, in the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz, where American forces impose a naval blockade on ships and tankers coming from and departing from Iran.
Trump’s post came after he said, on Friday, that he intends to declare “the Strait of Hormuz within American territory after we complete the defeat of Iran,” indicating that this will happen “very soon.”
“We are imposing a blockade, so no ships can pass unless we want them to,” Trump added to a crowd during an event in Nassau County, New York.
Declaring the international waterway as American territory would require, at the very least, the deployment of forces in the region indefinitely, despite Trump’s previous pledge that the war with Iran would be short-lived.
