- The United States claims that Tehran’s naval capabilities have been drastically reduced.
- In fact, it is Iran which dominates the Strait of Hormuz with the help of its mosquito fleet and other speedboats.
- Our journalist William de Lesseux takes stock of LCI.
In recent days, the number of small Iranian boats has reportedly increased in the Strait of Hormuz. A specialized site would have detected no less than 333 in the area, while only around sixty had been detected last week.
“Satellite images allow us to locate them but not to trace them precisely. More than a hundred ships are operating in the north. They act there as a priority, their number is stable
“, explains our journalist William de Lesseux on LCI, in a sequence to be found in the video at the top of this article.
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And to continue: “But it is in the middle of the strait that we have observed an inflation of this number of small ships in recent days. As if Iran had decided on a larger, more dispersed, more offensive deployment
.” For the United States, these data do not hold up and they speak of a decrease in the number of speedboats.
At the same time, the Revolutionary Guards announced that they had let more than 30 ships pass. They are largely Chinese, due to the close relations maintained by the two countries. A Japanese tanker and another Panama-flagged vessel were also reportedly allowed to cross.



