The Trump administration remains adamant that the U.S.-Iran ceasefire remains in place despite Iranian attacks on U.S. Navy and commercial vessels and the United Arab Emirates in recent days.
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. military would begin guiding commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz to keep them safe from Iranian attacks, in what the Pentagon has dubbed “Project Freedom.”
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Within two days, Iran attacked nine commercial vessels, seized two commercial tankers, and carried out more than 10 attacks against U.S. forces, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine said Tuesday. U.S. personnel aboard AH-64 Apache and MH-60 Seahawk helicopters subsequently destroyed six small Iranian boats that were threatening commercial ships in and around the strait, U.S. Central Command Cmdr. Brad Cooper said on Monday.
These attacks, Caine said, remain “below the threshold” of what would push them to restart “major combat operations at this point.”
“The threshold of restarting is a political decision above my pay grade,” Caine added later, when pressed on how they view that barometer. “What I’ll say is it’s low harassing fire right now. It feels like Iran is grasping at straws to try to do something across the southern flank.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth described Project Freedom as a defensive operation, one that is distinct from the war mission, which was named Operation Epic Fury. At the White House on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Operation Epic Fury has concluded.
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Mona Yacoubian, a Middle East expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner that while it is unclear what the threshold actually is, “I think it’s clear that they are seeking to avoid all-out confrontation with Iran at this time, and so therefore they’re making the assessment that they believe that Iran has not crossed the threshold. But, we are seeing the most aggressive Iranian action, certainly since the ceasefire on April 7.”
“So it is notable that the U.S. is choosing to interpret it as still being, in their words, below the threshold of unraveling of the ceasefire,” Yacoubian said. “I think what we’re watching, in essence, is a battle for control over the strait.”
Iran also fired 15 missiles and four drones at the UAE, according to the country’s defense ministry. Emirati authorities confirmed at least one successful drone attack that ignited a fire at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, which is the UAE’s major oil port in the Gulf of Oman and can be reached without transiting the blockaded strait. The defense ministry reported additional drone and missile attacks on Tuesday.
Additionally, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Monday confirming that an Emirati tanker operated by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company was “struck by two drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
It was the first time Iranian forces fired on the UAE since the U.S.-Iran ceasefire went into effect.
Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane said on Fox News that the attacks on the UAE are “clearly a violation of the ceasefire agreement” on Tuesday.
Trump announced that the United States and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire deal on April 7, mere hours before a self-imposed threat to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure. The announcement, though, specified that the deal was contingent upon Iran reopening the strait, which has remained bottlenecked.
Iran’s threats against vessels that transit the strait without explicit Iranian approval and payment have caused global economic instability. As a response, Trump ordered U.S. forces to block tankers going to or coming from Iranian ports. Project Freedom is the newest chapter in the conflict that has shifted from Iranian soil to the waterways off its coasts.
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Hegseth described Project Freedom on Tuesday as a “direct gift from the United States to the world” that has “established a powerful red, white, and blue dome over the strait.”
Trump later announced a temporary pause of the effort to see if a peace deal could be struck.
