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Trump Admin Denies That Iran Hit US Warship Entering Strait of Hormuz
One foreign policy expert urged skepticism of the administration's claim, noting its consistent pattern of "immediate, unequivocal denial, then slowly dribbling out confirmation."
May 04, 2026
The Trump administration has denied reports from Iranian media on Monday that a US Navy warship was hit in the Strait of Hormuz.
After US President Donald Trump said this weekend that the US Navy would help “guide” commercial ships through the strait, in what was referred to as "Project Freedom," an Iranian official described it as a ploy to "provoke" retaliation and pledged that any vessels attempting to navigate the waterway without authorization would be "promptly intercepted" by Iranian forces.
According to Iranian news agencies, that is just what occurred on Monday morning. The Fars News Agency, which is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that according to local news sources, “two missiles” had made impact in an attack on a US Navy frigate that had entered the strait without permission from the Iranian government.
It said the ship “violated security protocols for transit and navigation near Jask with the intent to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, [and] came under missile attack after ignoring warnings from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Navy.” Fars added that the ship "has been prevented from continuing its course due to these strikes and has been forced to retreat and flee the area."
In a comment to Reuters, a senior Iranian official added that it was unclear whether the warship had sustained any damage.
The Tasnim news agency published a statement from the Iranian army’s public relations department, saying that “with the decisive and swift warning from the Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the entry of enemy American Zionist destroyers into the Strait of Hormuz area was prevented.”
US Central Command (CENTCOM) quickly denied the claim, posting a "fact check" on social media.
"CLAIM: Iranian state media claims that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hit a US warship with two missiles," the post said. "TRUTH: No US Navy ships have been struck. US forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports."
Another post stated that "US Navy guided-missile destroyers are currently operating in the Arabian [Persian] Gulf after transiting the Strait of Hormuz in support of Project Freedom" and that "American forces are actively assisting efforts to restore transit for commercial shipping."
It added that "as a first step, two US-flagged merchant vessels have successfully transited through the Strait of Hormuz and are safely headed on their journey."
Iran's shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz to unauthorized ships has allowed it to wreak havoc on the Western economy in retaliation for the war launched by the US and Israel at the end of February.
About 20% of the globe's seaborne oil shipments pass through the waterway, and its closure has caused global oil prices to spike, driving US gas prices to more than $4 on average and rippling inflation through the economy.
Observers of open-source marine tracking reports have said it did not show that two US-flagged merchant ships passed through the strait on Monday. However, it is possible the ships could have navigated the strait with the tracking technology disabled.
While information from the strait remains scarce, Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said the public should remain skeptical of the Trump administration's denials given its track record.
"Watch closely," he wrote on social media. "The Trump administration's consistent pattern has been immediate, unequivocal denial, then slowly dribbling out confirmation that 'yeah, that happened, it was bad, actually very bad,' and hope coverage has already moved on, and no one notices."
As an example, he pointed to the first Trump administration's claim following the 2020 assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani that retaliatory attacks against the Al Asad airbase, a US military installation, had resulted in zero casualties.
“Initially, Trump claimed, ‘We suffered no casualties,’” Duss said. “In the weeks that followed, we learned that there were actually over 100 casualties." At least 109 US troops had suffered brain injuries from the strikes, according to the Pentagon.
More recently, CENTCOM initially denied claims that Iran had shot down US fighter jets in early April, claiming that "all aircraft are accounted for" when a plane had, in fact, been shot down, requiring a multi-day operation to rescue two pilots from Iranian territory.
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How Trump's Department of Homeland Security Brings the War on Terror Home
The Trump administration is conducting its own homegrown version of counterinsurgency warfare right here in the United States of America.
Apr 30, 2026
America’s Department of Homeland Security has been receiving lots of scrutiny right now from journalists and ordinary citizens like me—and for good reason! Detaining people en route to their kids’ schools, in hospitals, or at work shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind these days when I think of “freedom,” “civil rights,” or “America.” Nor should spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild warehouses so that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, can hold people without charges in subhuman conditions. What do you think?
In all of this mayhem, it’s easy to overlook new human rights violations because there are so many each day. Violations of the rule of law have become the air Americans breathe.
In a matter of months, ICE has leaped far from its mandate as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) civilian investigative arm—not its muscle. Note its agents’ forced-entry tactics, its recent 40% shorter training protocols that stress the use of force over knowledge of our Constitution, and a dramatic rise in use-of-force incidents and deaths in custody. And it has more than doubled in size!
Instead of a workaday force that makes sure the rules are followed, it’s become an internal police force that bears increasing resemblance to what the United States military has been doing in dozens of other countries around the world as part of the never-ending Global War on Terror (GWOT) that this country has been waging for almost a quarter-century now in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. America’s wars are indeed coming home.
Our Wars, Ourselves
The War on Terror has been notable for its heavy reliance on special forces operations like nighttime raids on civilian homes and incursions into mosques, schools, and marketplaces to search for enemy combatants or information. In particular, the US scaled back large troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan after its failed wars in those countries, and yet, by 2016, about 70% of the world’s nations had US special operations forces deployed in them. At the height of the Afghanistan war in 2010-2011, US special operations forces were conducting thousands of nighttime raids into Afghan homes in search of suspected terrorists.
The violence our troops have used in our names should not be easy to stomach, even from afar.
Since those special forces operate outside of conventional battlefield settings, often with little planning and without embedded journalists, the public has had few chances to scrutinize their activities. Not surprisingly, then, we haven’t paid much attention to the civilian deaths that resulted. Roughly 40%—or close to half a million—of those killed directly in our wars have been civilians, an unnerving number of them children. Our military’s reliance on special operations, urban warfare, and proximity-based ways of identifying suspected terrorists (more on that later) means that many people with no connection whatsoever to the warring parties have been shot down or bombed out in their homes, markets, or schools, among other places.
And that’s because the US military has come to rely on a form of targeting called “pattern-of-life surveillance,” whereby they look for suspected opposition leaders by using what they know of their daily routines to aid with target identification. This approach holds some serious implications for the safety of civilians and has arguably led to extra anger and so the ability of armed opposition groups to recruit new members more easily.
The intimacy of death in our wars, combined with an increasingly unaccountable Pentagon that has isolated itself from journalists, while using its own secretive “justice” system, means that knowledge of civilian deaths often emerges only months or even years after the original events (if and when journalists find eyewitnesses willing to provide their accounts). As a result, the collective lack of awareness of most Americans has been striking and, in recent years, has been increased by the misconception that drone warfare—an ever more prominent part of our wars—is more “precise” at targeting enemy combatants than boots-on-the-ground combat.
21st Century Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
One thing is certain: US military servicemembers who have fought in those wars do know what they entail (and many carry that intimate knowledge with them in particularly haunting ways). As a clinician, I specialize in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which you’ve likely heard of by now. It’s a condition characterized by flashbacks; a desire to avoid anything that reminds you of what happened; and a deep sense of anger or ongoing edginess, anxiety, depression, and mistrust.
For people who have fought in such foreign wars and manage to make it back, everyday life in America can be riddled with imagery that triggers painful memories. For this generation of veterans, among whom are those who were charged with kicking down family doors on night raids, a child’s playful scream on a playground might trigger memories of the boy who screamed in horror when you rammed down the door of his home in Kabul, Afghanistan. The sight of a discarded doll on the ground at that same playground might trigger a flashback to the market in Iraq where a little girl dropped everything as she fled the explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) with her mother. A cornfield in the town where you grew up could transport you back to the rural Afghan village where you shot a farmer you thought was a terrorist.
There’s a reason why events like the infamous rampage of American troops through the village of My Lai in 1968 during the Vietnam War and the massacre that followed (when they killed hundreds of unarmed civilians) still remain etched in the memories of many Americans of a certain age, whereas I’d bet that most of us would be hard pressed these days to name particular instances when US troops murdered civilians in our contemporary wars. Perhaps there are simply too many such murders, or maybe killing has been in the collective air for so long—in our video games, in Hollywood films, in our militarized police force—that we don’t care as much anymore.
The Fog of War
Were we, however, to pay more attention and look more closely, the violence our troops have used in our names should not be easy to stomach, even from afar. Take the story of the 2005 shooting of 24 civilians in the small city of Haditha, Iraq. Once a peaceful, shade-dappled middle-class residential area, Haditha was occupied by American troops who conducted nighttime raids on civilian homes in search of “enemy combatants.”
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time took on urgent meaning for Haditha’s residents, even as being seen around the US military base nearby could mean risking decapitation by enemy troops, since members of al-Qaeda were also watching. One day, an IED blew up a Marine Humvee (an all-terrain military vehicle), killing one American soldier and injuring two more. In the hours that followed, Marines entered three homes and shot almost everyone inside, nearly wiping out three families and 24 civilians, including at least 10 young children. The head of that Marine unit claimed that the victims were somehow responsible for that IED explosion (because they had not stopped it), though the only link was that they happened to live in the neighborhood where it took place. In its award-winning coverage of the incident 19 years later, The New Yorker offered this quote from the letter of the lawyer for the Marines: “I trust you have no sense of… the stress of combat or the fog of war that precedes from that.”
If the administration can violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure when it comes to people in their homes, then it’s your guess or mine who will next end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Though that grim incident stands out in my mind because of the vivid coverage it finally received, what came to be known as the Haditha massacre was anything but the only one in which civilians became direct targets of American forces in this country’s War on Terror. Take the multiple incidents in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2010 and the years that followed, when US and Afghan forces killed farmers and day laborers they misidentified as enemy Taliban fighters. Or consider the 2010 nighttime raid by US special operations forces in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, when troops attacked the home of a family gathering to celebrate a child’s birth, killing two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and two male relatives (though the US-NATO forces involved initially claimed that the women had been killed prior to their assault).
There are far too many incidents to name here, but I think you get the picture of a war in which scenes that you and I might otherwise normally relate to became enmired with violence for no obvious reason.
The Ripple Effects at Home
There are many parallels that can be drawn between the US War on Terror and the Department of Homeland Security’s current immigration crackdown here in the US, and you’ve probably noticed some of them. Take the reliance of DHS and ICE on patterns of movement among targeted populations to sweep up large numbers of “illegal aliens,” a tendency to detain (or even shoot) first and ask questions later (if at all), and something we haven’t even talked about yet—the deportation of detainees to countries where they are likely to be mistreated or even tortured in prisons with far laxer human rights standards than we have (much like the Central Intelligence Agency’s grim global “black sites” in the Global War on Terror). This points to the sort of operational flexibility that military commanders and many Americans troublingly accept as part of our present national security operations.
Most troubling to me is that in May 2025, DHS issued an internal memo authorizing its agents to enter people’s homes without a warrant signed by a judge. Instead, those agents only need an administrative warrant signed by another immigration official (based on a suspicion that they have reason to remove someone living in the home). A handful of high-profile incidents since then show that ICE agents are indeed entering homes forcibly.
According to a New York advocacy group, in November 2025, ICE agents knocked down a family’s door in the borough of Queens in New York City and pointed a gun at a mother and four children before forcibly removing her from her bed. They did not produce a warrant and alleged that they were looking for someone who turned out not even to live at that address. Similarly, in September of that year, hundreds of armed federal agents descended on a Chicago apartment building at night in search of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, some landing in Black Hawk helicopters on the roof. They detained dozens of residents, including children whom they took from their beds, zip-tied, and held for hours, some separated from their parents or guardians.
If the administration can violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure when it comes to people in their homes, then it’s your guess or mine who will next end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, their fates shaped by President Donald Trump’s choice of an enemy of the day or the urges of stressed-out ICE agents.
Trauma and the Everyday
Counterinsurgency wars are often the bloodiest types because troops attempt to root out the enemy in the general population. Our 21st-century War on Terror has shown that this country remains more than capable of fighting like that today.
One of my favorite anthropologists, Begoña Aretxaga, drove home the horror of such combat. She documented political violence against Basque nationalists in late 20th-century Spain. State officials raided homes and communities, planted car bombs, and kidnapped activists. As she pointed out, such trauma is “horror cropping up in the routines of ordinary life.” In the cities where she did research, people watched their neighbors and relatives being “disappeared” or getting killed, while fear permeated everyday events like taking a walk through their neighborhood.
We can look at our military’s actions as well as ICE’s in detail and refuse to accept “terror” among us (however the government conceptualizes that elusive term!) as a reason to mistreat others.
Today, none of us should be surprised that the Trump administration is conducting its own homegrown version of counterinsurgency warfare right here in the United States of America. Tactics once used abroad are increasingly our new normal. I don’t think it helps that each new development shocks so many of us more than the last, making it hard (for me at least) to look at what DHS and ICE are doing with fresh surprise each time such actions prove to be distinctly so far beyond the pale of what the founders laid out in our Constitution.
Yet understanding the costs of war also offers us an opportunity. We can look at our military’s actions as well as ICE’s in detail and refuse to accept “terror” among us (however the government conceptualizes that elusive term!) as a reason to mistreat others. We can denounce atrocities ranging from that Chicago raid to possible future versions of the Haditha massacre.
We can also think more clearly about the root causes of why our war on terror has indeed been coming home—literally. (It should be no surprise that about a third of ICE officers reportedly have had some kind of experience in the US military.) While we’re protesting what the Trump administration is doing, we should also think about the way it’s been slashing the mental health staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans need our help, too, rather than being left in isolation and shame.
After all, even those who break and enter American homes aren’t aberrations. They are not just among us, they are us: For years, they have acted in our names, including abroad, when all too many of us were barely paying attention. And when we ignore what they did over there, we allow the same things to happen here.
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As Hegseth Touts Autonomous Warfare Command, Human Rights Expert Pushes Civilian Protections
Responding to other recent remarks from the Pentagon chief, the expert warned that “a sole focus on achieving maximum lethality is inherently incompatible with civilian protection.”
Apr 29, 2026
As the US military accelerates its adoption of autonomous weapons systems amid a growing global artificial intelligence arms race, one expert told Common Dreams on Wednesday that "greater action needs to be taken urgently" to protect civilians and ensure meaningful human control over rapidly developing technologies.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional lawmakers Wednesday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for 2027 that the military will soon have a new "sub-unified command" dedicated to autonomous warfare.
Hegseth, who advocates “maximum lethality” for US forces, has expressed disdain for what he called “stupid rules of engagement” designed to minimize civilian harm. He has overseen the dismantling of efforts meant to mitigate wartime harm to civilians—hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in US-led wars during this century, according to experts.
This "maximum lethality" ethos, combined with AI-powered systems allowing for exponentially faster and more numerous target selection, has raised concerns that have been underscored by actions including Israel Defense Forces massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, and US attacks like the cruise missile strike on a school in Iran that killed 155 children and staff.
"A sole focus on achieving maximum lethality is inherently incompatible with civilian protection," Verity Coyle, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's (HRW) crisis, conflict, and arms division, told Common Dreams. "If the United States truly seeks to protect civilians, it should forgo this limited focus and ensure it has guardrails in place that assess the proportionality of its actions and guarantee a distinction between civilians and combatants."
"Under international humanitarian law, civilian protection requires that military actions abide by the principles of distinction and proportionality," Coyle noted. "In other words, military actors must distinguish between civilians and combatants and ensure that the resulting harm to civilians from their actions would not be excessive in comparison to the perceived military gain."
Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems—commonly called "killer robots"—stress the need for meaningful human control. However, with industry-backed efforts afoot to ban state and local governments from placing guardrails on AI development, retaining such control could become increasingly difficult as the technology advances.
"The lack of serious guardrails... shows a troubling lack of concern for these real and immediate risks to civilians both in the United States and abroad," Coyle said. "While we have seen some Congress members and state legislators express concern over these developments, greater action needs to be taken urgently."
Asked about the "if we don't build it, they will" mentality of many US proponents of unchecked AI development that is reminiscent of the Cold War nuclear arms race, Coyle said the United States is ignoring its "ability to set the global agenda and international humanitarian law norms."
"As we see greater integration of AI in the military domain and resulting civilian harm, we need strong international leadership to respond to these threats, not states relinquishing their responsibilities," she asserted.
Coyle continued:
Throughout [HRW's] decades of work in banning weapons that cause indiscriminate civilian harm, including the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions, we have seen that even when some major military powers object to new international law, other states are able to band together and create new norms that major military powers eventually abide by. In this moment, the United States needs to decide if it will stand up for the principles of civilian protection and a rules-based order, or if it will walk away from the system it helped create and that has served to protect civilians for several decades.
There is also a danger that companies will proceed with risky AI weapons development, both in pursuit of profit and out of fear of getting left behind if they don't push forward. For example, Anthropic—maker of the AI assistant Claude—lost a $200 million Pentagon contract and is facing a government blacklist and legal battles after the company refused to loosen safety restrictions on autonomous weapons and surveillance.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, which makes the generative AI platform ChatGPT, rewrote its “no military use” policy to allow “national security” applications of its products, opening the door to lucrative Pentagon contracts.
Asked what civil society can do now to rein in reckless AI development, Coyle said that while HRW remains "focused on educating decision-makers and the public," there are "clear steps states can take, including supporting an international legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems and regulating the military use of AI."
"Through the Stop Killer Robots Campaign—a coalition of 270+ organizations focused on banning and regulating autonomous weapons systems and AI in the military domain—we are working globally to address these challenges," she noted.
While loss of human control over AI systems still appears to still be well over the horizon, Coyle said that "every day we see a world inching closer to this reality."
"Our message to states is that now is the time to take immediate, robust action to address this risk and protect civilians before it is too late," she stressed.
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