TEHRAN -- A senior spokesman for Iran’s armed forces said on Saturday that the initiative in the Strait of Hormuz remains in the hands of Iran’s powerful military, dismissing claims by the head of U.S. Central Command about escorting oil tankers and the exit of one billion barrels of oil over the past two months as a “failed psychological operation.”

Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said that the “projection and false and ridiculous claim by the 
CENTCOM commander regarding the escorting of oil tankers and the exit of one billion barrels of oil over the past two months is more of a failed psychological operation than a reality.”
He said the claim is aimed at “boosting the morale of the exhausted and worn-out forces of the terrorist American army in the region and justifying America’s exorbitant financial and human costs in the region.”
Shekarchi added that such claims “cannot change the reality of the withdrawal of that country’s aggressor army from the region.”
He emphasized that “the initiative in the Strait of Hormuz remains in the hands of Iran’s powerful armed forces.”