President Donald Trump said Thursday that one of his top priorities during the conflict with Iran was preventing an economic catastrophe, revealing that the U.S. military quietly escorted oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz to keep global energy markets stable and avoid what he warned could have become a worldwide depression.

Speaking during an extensive interview in the Oval Office with CNBC, Trump said he has long been determined to avoid presiding over an economic collapse like the one he associates with President Herbert Hoover.

“I’ve always said, I don’t want to be a president with a depression on his resume,” Trump said during a wide-ranging Oval Office interview on CNBC.

“I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. Of almost all presidents, some have been bad, some have been good, very few have been great.

“But I never want to be Herbert Hoover because Herbert Hoover was the president that probably took us into the Great Depression, the greatest depression, led the whole world there.

“He raised interest rates and he raised taxes simultaneously. I guess he was trying to do something, but that didn’t work out too well.”

Turning to the recent war with Iran, Trump argued that allowing Tehran to shut down the Strait of Hormuz would have sent oil prices skyrocketing and devastated the global economy.

According to Trump, the United States carried out a previously undisclosed naval operation in which American warships escorted commercial oil tankers through the southern portion of the strategic waterway under the cover of darkness. He said the effort lasted for weeks and was instrumental in preventing crude oil prices from spiraling beyond roughly $115 per barrel.

“One of the reasons it only went up to like $115, if you remember, and I’ve seen guests on your show where they go oil will be $350 a barrel, and there’ll be a depression because at $350 there’s a depression. It’s automatic. It goes with it,” Trump said.

“I said, well, we’ve got to do something. We did something nobody knew,” he said.

“Every night, we were taking ships out through the south, which is the furthest point from where they have their little weapons.

“And they were going along the coast with no lights for a month and a half. A lot of ships came out.

“We had one night where we took 22 ships out. That’s a lot of oil. Those are big ships. Some of them are really big ships.

“And in a way, they had courage going out. But our Navy took them out. We escorted them out, and nobody knew. The lights were off. Everything was off. Everything was silent,” Trump explained.

Trump said that had oil reached $300 a barrel, the resulting economic fallout would have been severe enough to define his presidency.

The president remarked, “then I become Herbert Hoover. I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”

Trump also reflected on the Great Depression itself, arguing that the economic crisis lingered for years despite the leadership of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“FDR didn’t get us out of it. There’s a picture right there, FDR,” Trump said, pointing to a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“Nice picture. It took us years to get out of it. I don’t ever want to be in a depression. I don’t want to be a president that oversees the great worldwide depression. That was Herbert Hoover. And it was a terrible thing,” Trump said.