Trump says Iran is sending ’20 big boats of oil’ through Hormuz Strait as ‘sign of respect’

“They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they?,” he told reporters.

“Well, they’re agreeing with us on the plan. I mean, we asked for 15 things, and for the most part, we’re going to be asking for a couple of other things. And just to prove that they’re serious, they gave us all these boats,” he added.

#WATCH | US President Donald J Trump says, “… I can’t define it exactly, but they (Iran) gave us, I think as a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait. That’s taking place starting tomorrow morning, over the next couple of… pic.twitter.com/ZAD0T9Ao4U

— ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2026

He further said, “when I talked about four days ago, a present, I said they gave me a present, but I didn’t think I was at liberty to say what it was. What it was was 8 plus 2; it’s 10 massive boatloads of oil. And today they gave us another present, they gave us 20 boatloads of oil. That starts being shipped tomorrow.”

The US President also said that the two nations are having “good meetings”.

“We’re having very good meetings, both directly and indirectly, and we’re getting a lot of very important points,” he said.

On Iran’s new leader, Trump said the current leadership is acting “very reasonably.”

“I just have lots of alternatives. We have a tremendous number of ships over there. We don’t need them all because of, you know, the power. If you had said that in three days we were going to knock out 158 ships, their entire Navy, which we did, we knocked out their entire Air Force, we knocked out most of their missiles. That’s why you see missile attacks, but they’re down to just sputtering,” he said.

“And we have a group, it’s really a new regime. It’s the new group of people, people that we’ve never dealt with before, that are acting very reasonably. It is truly regime change.” When he was asked if Iran’s dead leader Khamenei’s son was alive and a part of the ongoing conversation.”

“We think he may be. Nobody’s heard about him and he’s… he may be alive, but he’s obviously very seriously in trouble. Really, he’s seriously wounded,” Trump said.

US plans ground operation

His comments sound rather contradictory, as the President is weighing military options against Iran, including a possible ground operation — by sending at least 10,000 additional combat troops to the Middle East.

Iran issued a warning to Washington that Iranian forces “are waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever.”

“Our firing continues. Our missiles are in place. Our determination and faith have increased,” said Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the country’s parliament speaker.

The move comes amid escalating tensions after Iran rejected a 15-point US proposal, which is believed to include: Iran committing to no nuclear weapons, handing over its highly enriched uranium, limits on Tehran’s defense capabilities, an end to regional proxy groups and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.