MUSCAT, Aug. 26 -- An oil tanker nine nautical miles northeast of the Omani coastline had its engine room destroyed Tuesday by a projectile from an undisclosed source. At roughly the same hour, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that every mine in the Strait of Hormuz's international waters had been detonated or removed. The tanker's crew survived. The vessel did not move.

Together, those two events compressed six months of conflict in the world's most consequential shipping lane into a single morning. Since the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, the Strait has been a site of mining, vessel attacks, and diplomatic deadlock. Trump's announcement did not change that condition. It described a differen...