Iran’s Baghaei exposes US hypocrisy as Rubio forgets Trump’s ‘pirates’ boast over ship seizures
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has highlighted the stark hypocrisy in Washington’s latest accusations against Tehran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Baghaei pointed out that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claims about Iranian actions against commercial shipping conveniently ignore President Donald Trump’s own proud admission that American forces operate “like pirates.”
He responded to Rubio’s recent remarks in which the US secretary of state, accusing Iran of attacking ships, said: “We haven’t seen anything like this since World War II and the pirates of the Caribbean.”
Baghaei juxtaposed this with Trump’s May 1, 2026, comments, made while boasting about the seizure of commercial ships and the confiscation of oil cargoes amid the US naval blockade of Iranian ports: “We’re like PIRATES. We’re sort of like PIRATES.”
“Perhaps the president won’t be too pleased to learn that his secretary of state has so quickly forgotten his own proud claim of being like pirates,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman wrote.
Marco Rubio, accusing Iran of attacking ships، said: “We haven’t seen anything like this since World War II and the pirates of the Caribbean.”
— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) October 25, 2026
U.S. President, on 1 May 2026, boasting about seizing commercial ships and confiscating oil cargoes: “we’re like PIRATES. We’re sort of…
The exchange comes as Rubio has intensified efforts to portray Iran as the aggressor in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming in recent interviews that Tehran is targeting commercial vessels in a manner reminiscent of Nazi U-boat tactics during the Second World War.
US officials have simultaneously asserted that shipping volumes through the strategic waterway have largely recovered due to American military escorts, while calling for continued “extraordinary economic pressure” on Iran.
Iranian officials reject this narrative as a deliberate inversion of reality. The root of the insecurity in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, Tehran maintains, lies in the unprovoked US-Israeli aggression that began on February 28, which included strikes on Iranian territory, civilian casualties, and the subsequent imposition of an illegal naval blockade on Iranian ports.
Under that blockade, US forces intercepted and seized multiple Iranian oil tankers in international waters under the pretext of unilateral American court warrants tied to Washington’s extraterritorial sanctions regime.
Baghaei had previously condemned these actions as “the outright legalization of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas.
He wrote, “Welcome to the return of the pirates — only now, they operate with government-issued warrants, sail under official flags, and call their plunder ‘law enforcement.’”
Trump himself later celebrated the seizures, describing the takeover of ships, cargo, and oil as “a very profitable business” and openly stating that US forces were “sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Iranian judiciary officials have noted that the US president “openly confessed to acts of piracy,” contrasting this with Iran’s own actions in the Strait of Hormuz, which are carried out under domestic court orders and in accordance with international law to enforce regulations against vessels violating passage rules.
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