Treasury Secretary Admits Iran’s Oil Tankers Are Doing Just Fine

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that the United States is “fine” with allowing Iranian oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz—due to the surging oil prices thanks to Trump’s war.

“The Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we’ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan. “We think that there will be a natural opening that the Iranians are letting out, and for now we’re fine with that. We want the world to be well supplied.”

Asked whether the Trump administration will take any additional actions to address skyrocketing oil prices, Bessent said “it will depend on the duration of the conflict.” Iran, however, is very much profiting, as it’s maintained its ability to move oil around the world—mostly to China.

This comes just hours after President Trump virtually begged China, France, and other U.S. allies for help ushering oil through the strait.

The United States doesn’t seem to be “allowing” anything here. The Strait of Hormuz is lined with explosives and under Iranian control. Bessent’s admission seems like panicked capitulation based on skyrocketing oil prices rather than some kind of diplomatic tactic.

An Afghan man who worked with the United States military for more than a decade was dragged away from his two children at the preschool drop-off line. A day later, he was dead.

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal was detained by federal immigration agents in Richardson, Texas, Friday while dropping off his two children at preschool, according to his brother, Naseer Paktiawal, who spoke to CBS News.

“He was arrested in front of these kids while taking them to school at seven in the morning. Some people surrounded him, put him in the car, and drove him away while they were screaming, asking for help,” Naseer Paktiawal told CBS News.

Before emigrating to the United States in 2021, Paktiawal was a member of the Afghan special forces who was hired by the U.S. government. He worked with them for more than a decade. “He was a hero to his family, to his people, and to his country,” his brother told CBS News.

According to ICE, Mohammed Nazeer Paktiawal was “paroled into the U.S. by an immigration officer,” or granted temporary permission to enter the country under Operation Allies Refuge, an evacuation effort for allied Afghan nationals that took place under the Biden administration. ICE told CBS News, however, that Nazeer Paktiawal had provided no record of his military service. His parole had expired in August 2025, the agency said.

ICE claimed that he had previously been arrested for SNAP fraud and theft.

The evening of his arrest, in the processing room of ICE’s Dallas field office, Paktiawal complained of shortness of breath and chest pain. He was then transferred to Parkland Hospital, where he received treatment and a doctor bade him to stay for observation. The next morning, medical staff observed that his tongue had become swollen. Later, after cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other lifesaving measures, Paktiawal was declared dead.

“All I want,” said Naseer Paktiawal, “I want justice for my brother. I don’t need anything else from this government.”

The number of detainee deaths at ICE facilities has significantly increased as nearly 70,000 people are currently held in detention and the agency has stopped paying for health care altogether.

ICE has repeatedly failed to disclose information about detainee deaths, according to Zeteo.

As of Monday, ICE’s detainee death reporting webpage only lists two deaths in 2026. But ICE has published press releases documenting nine deaths since the beginning of 2026—a year that began with one detainee being choked to death by a guard.

Just two weeks into the war that he started, Donald Trump has resorted to begging other countries for assistance in securing the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump claimed that other regions of the world—such as China—depend more on the Middle East waterway than the U.S. does, and should therefore be leading the charge in reopening the bomb-laden strait.

“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory. It’s the place from which they get their energy. And they should come and they should help us protect it,” Trump said. “Why are we maintaining the Hormuz Strait when it’s really there for China and many other countries? Why aren’t they doing it?”

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait of Hormuz is the single most important energy transit point in the world, funneling approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. Iran began laying mines across the passageway last week, effectively sealing in the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman from the rest of the open ocean.

Trump insisted that China gets about 90 percent of its crude oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz, though analysts that spoke with CNBC disagree, noting to the business network that “Beijing has spent the past two decades diversifying energy supplies and building strategic reserves to mitigate potential disruptions.”

In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for roughly 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In a Truth Social post on Saturday, the president insisted that nations “affected by Iran’s attempted closure” of the strait would be sending warships to the area. He specifically named China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the U.K. as countries he hoped would contribute.

Nonetheless, some of America’s named allies have already rejected Trump’s plea. French President Emmanuel Macron said he would send the French navy to escort tankers, but only after the conflict stabilizes. Leaders from the U.K., Germany, Poland, and Spain have outright refused to get involved.

The U.S. president is attempting to strong-arm Beijing into the matter, openly weighing the possibility of delaying his planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping if his economic adversary does not participate in his war plan, reported the Financial Times Sunday.

Trump has yet to receive Congress’s approval for the war or formally address the American public about the deadly conflict. In failing to do so, he has broken tradition with every other president before him.

So far, 13 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. More than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south. Some 3.2 million people have been displaced as U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran have damaged more than 42,000 civilian sites, including homes, hospitals, and schools, according to Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani.

President Donald Trump really doesn’t want to talk about sending more U.S. service members to die in the Middle East, after he’d already claimed the war was won. 

The Pentagon is moving 5,000 additional Marines and several warships to the Middle East, amid Iran’s continued attacks on the Strait of Hormuz that have paralyzed global trade and sent oil prices skyrocketing.

Speaking to the press aboard Air Force One Sunday, Trump cast aside questions about the deployment. 

“Can you explain why we’re sending 5,000 Marines and sailors?” asked one reporter. “Can you explain why you’re—”

“You’re a very obnoxious person,” Trump said, before quickly moving on. 

He also appeared to sidestep questions about the U.S. service members who had already been killed in retaliatory attacks. 

“Do you have a comment on the six service members who passed?” asked another reporter.

“Who else?” Trump said, searching for another question before quickly departing.

Trump’s refusal to speak about these service members is the clearest sign that the president is unable—or unwilling—to grasp the human cost of the U.S. and Israel’s military onslaught on Iran.  

Last week, Trump confusedly claimed the war was “won” but that the U.S. must stick around to “finish the job.” On Thursday, he insisted that rising gas prices are actually good—surely a winning political message. Now, it seems that Trump’s increasingly expensive and divisive war will continue. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged Friday that the U.S. military had opened a comprehensive investigation into the attack on an Iranian elementary school.

Yet seconds after he tacitly acknowledged evidence indicating America’s role in the bloodshed, Hegseth insisted that the United States “never” targets civilians during foreign conflicts.

Responding to a reporter’s query about the February 28 incident, which left at least 175 dead—most of them children, Hegseth said that the department would not let leaks to the press “lead us or force our hand into indicating” what occurred, “because the truth matters.”

He did, however, reveal that U.S. Central Command “has designated an investigating officer to complete a command investigation.”

“The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident, and the investigating officer is from outside CENTCOM and is a—is a general officer,” Hegseth said. “But I will note to this group and to the world, there’s only one entity in this conflict between us and Iran that never targets civilians, literally never targets civilians.”

In the weeks since the attack, a growing mountain of evidence has suggested that the U.S. military was responsible for the strike in Minab, a city in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan.

A U.S. assessment report leaked last week found that the strike was “likely” the fault of an American Tomahawk missile. It noted that American forces did not intentionally target the school and could have hit it in error. One hypothesis included the possibility that the U.S. had relied on dated intelligence that incorrectly assumed the school was part of an Iranian military base.

“The Pentagon does not typically conduct such investigations of another country’s military operations,” reported The Washington Post.