Worldwide, U.S. President Donald Trump’s gleeful May 1 assertion that the U.S. military are being deployed as “pirates,” with the United States making a lot of money off it, too, has been headline news, not favorable headlines, either.
The U.S. Navy has a long history of fighting piracy, a practice most famously associated with the British monarchy. Trump, however, did not consider his remarks to be an insult.
Addressing the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches dinner in Florida, he recounted, with relish, how two weeks before a US destroyer had blown up the engine of the Iranian-flagged cargo vessel near the Strait of Hormuz with one shot, fired from five miles away, before the US Marines boarded it. “We took over the ship. We took over the cargo, took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business. Who would have thought we were doing that? We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei took due note:. “The President of the United States has openly described the unlawful seizure of Iranian vessels as `piracy,’ brazenly boasting that `we act like pirates.’ This was no verbal slip. It was a direct and damning admission of the criminal nature of their actions against international maritime navigation. The international community, UN Member States, and the UN Secretary-General must firmly reject any normalization of such blatant violations of international law.”
