USS Truxtun (DDG-103) and USS Mason (DDG-87) made the first successful armed escort transit of the Strait of Hormuz under sustained IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) fire on Monday 4 May, the opening day of Project Freedom . CENTCOM (US Central Command) said its destroyers defeated 'each and every threat' from small boats, cruise missiles and drones; attack helicopters and naval gunfire accounted for the losses, with CBS News reporting seven Iranian craft sunk and Al Jazeera six 1. Two American-flagged merchant vessels followed the destroyers through. No US casualties; both ships unscathed.
The attacks came from the Bandar Abbas flotilla, with cruise missiles from IRGC Navy coastal batteries and drones launched from southern provinces 2. Iran claimed it had hit a US naval vessel, a claim CENTCOM denied 3. The boat-loss count matters because the IRGC told the Majlis (Iran's parliament) on Saturday 2 May that 60 per cent of its small attack-boat fleet had survived the opening Israeli airstrikes . On Tehran's own arithmetic, six or seven losses is a tolerable rate of attrition: the doctrine that treats the strait as home water remained intact through the contact.
The Truxtun and Mason transit ran through a corridor Iran's elected legislature now treats as territorial. The Majlis National Security Commission ratified a 12-article Hormuz sovereignty law on 2 May , built on Mojtaba Khamenei's written claim of 'new management' over the waterway . CENTCOM's written order, like the version issued before Project Freedom, covers Iranian-port traffic only and does not incorporate Trump's Truth Social toll-interdiction provision . The American flag passed through the channel; the Iranian institutional claim over it did not move.
