He´s lying himself.
He just limite the defeat to a kind of mistaken calculus about the control of Strait of Hormuz, and that is a obvious lie.
Even before controlling the Strait of Hormuz, Iran was already giving the US a beating. They hit to the point to empty all military bases in Middle East. They lost long range radar, SAM launchers and more than a dozen of aircrafts just in the bases.
More than 3 dozen of aircrafts were shot down, creating a de facto A2/AD zone. Probably two dozen were drones, but 2 C130 were shootdown, 6 helicopters and at least 3 fighters. And re deployment of new forces in rural areas was promising more prizes for IRGCADF.
The carriers were operating to the limit of the radius combat of their aircrafts. In addition to that, the denial of the use of US bases in the Region caused long refueling flights where two tanker planes were lost due to enemy action and a third was seriously damaged. They were operating from Israel or even Cyprus in countless hours of flight just to enter in a contested airspace were SAM SHORADS of IR seekers were ambushing them.
No, before loosing Strait of Hormuz, THEY LOST THE WAR.