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On Tuesday morning, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth insisted that the ceasefire with Iran is still in effect — despite ongoing naval warfare, with U.S. forces reportedly destroying six Iranian boats on Monday and President Donald Trump threatening that other vessels that cross the U.S. blockade will be obliterated.
Describing the U.S.’s blockade on Iranian vessels near the Strait of Hormuz as a “humanitarian” effort, Hegseth said that the U.S. has created a “red, white, and blue dome over the strait.” He said this involves “24/7” surveillance over the strait.
“To what remains of Iran’s forces: If you attack American troops or innocent commercial shipping, you will face overwhelming and devastating firepower,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth was repeating a threat made by Trump, who told Fox News on Monday that any Iranian ships that may attempt to fire at U.S. ships will be “blown off the face of the earth.” This came after Hegseth said that the U.S. is sending a second aircraft carrier to enforce the blockade on Friday.
Despite this, Hegseth said that the ceasefire is “not over” when asked by a reporter later in the press conference.
“The ceasefire is not over. Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project,” he said. “We expected there would be some churn in the beginning, which happened.” Hegseth defended the blockade as a defensive mechanism, and said that it’s up to Trump as to whether anything done by Iran “were to escalate into a violation of a ceasefire.”
On Sunday, Trump announced that the U.S. is launching a new effort known as “Project Freedom,” the goal of which, he claims, is for U.S. forces to escort merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s navy reportedly hit a U.S. warship attempting to maneuver into the strait on Monday, but the U.S. has denied the incident.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it had destroyed six Iranian boats on Monday, but tried to label the move as defensive.
“The IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] has launched multiple cruise missiles, drones, and small boats at ships we are protecting. We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” said Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, per Reuters.
In his press conference, Hegseth said that the ships were merely “turned around.” An Iranian commander said, according to Iranian media, that the U.S. hit two civilian cargo boats and killed five civilians on board.
The remarks come as the Trump administration is dubiously trying to argue that the ceasefire puts a pause on the 60-day deadline required for the president to obtain approval from Congress for the war. This may be part of the reason that the administration is trying to downplay recent military activities.
“We are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth said in testimony to Congress last week.
This reasoning, however, is almost the exact opposite of the supposed justification laid out by the administration in a memo by the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser last month. In that document, which sought to address the war in the context of international law, legal advisers said that the Trump administration does not need to obtain congressional approval because they have already been at war with Iran for years, or potentially even decades.
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