U.S. says ceasefire with Iran intact despite skirmishes at sea, missile strikes
by Mike Glenn, Vaughn Cockayne, Tom Howell Jr. · The Washington TimesThe U.S. ceasefire with Iran is intact despite a second day of hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on a critical Persian Gulf ally, the Trump administration said Tuesday.
President Trump cited progress in squeezing Tehran through military and economic means. He said the Navy had successfully guided merchant ships through the strait.
Mr. Trump said the U.S. retains the upper hand in sluggish peace talks because his blockade is crashing Iran’s economy and making its currency worthless.
Tehran wants to make a deal, he said, but factions within the country are busy “playing games.”
“They should do the smart thing,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office. “We don’t want to go in and kill people.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that a ceasefire announced April 7 remains in place despite the attacks and an exchange of fire between U.S. and Iranian forces this week that resulted in the sinking of at least six Iranian boats that had been harassing commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The ceasefire is not over,” Mr. Hegseth told Pentagon reporters.
Standing alongside Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Hegseth said the Iranian attacks had remained “below the threshold” necessary to declare the ceasefire void.
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At the White House, Mr. Trump declined to say which Iranian actions would invalidate the ceasefire.
“They know what to do,” he said. “They know what not to do, more importantly.”
Mr. Trump and his top military officials sized up the situation on the second day of Project Freedom, a U.S. mission to guide neutral commercial vessels that have been trapped by Iran’s clampdown on the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran is using the Strait of Hormuz, through which flows a fifth of the world’s oil, as leverage in peace talks in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said U.S. naval vessels will not attack Iran unless they are attacked first.
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“This is a defensive operation. And what that means is very simple. There’s no shooting unless we are shot at first,” he said at the White House. “You’re not going to let some fast boat come up on the ship and shoot it up. We’re going to respond to it.”
The secretary said the entire world should reject Iran’s clampdown on the strait.
“Iran cannot be allowed to normalize this control of the straits. It’s completely unlawful, illegal,” Mr. Rubio said.
Because the Strait of Hormuz is only 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, the waters of Iran and Oman overlap, but under international law, all states retain a right of transit passage that coastal nations cannot suspend.
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Project Freedom has guided at least two ships through the strait, including one from shipping giant Maersk, though Iran is engaged in provocations with stepped-up aggression and fiery rhetoric.
It is not clear whether the world’s shipping giants will accept the risk, even with U.S. escorts, nor have any other countries agreed to join the effort.
The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday that it faced a new round of missile and drone attacks from Iran, testing the Middle East ceasefire.
“The Ministry of Defense confirms that the sounds heard in scattered areas of the country are the result of the UAE’s air defense systems intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones,” the government said on X.
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The UAE fended off 19 missile and drone attacks Monday, and an oil facility caught fire from an attack. The Emiratis said the strikes originated in Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that as Pakistan mediates peace talks, “the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into [a] quagmire by ill-wishers. So should the UAE.”
“Project Freedom is Project Deadlock,” he wrote Tuesday on X.
Mr. Trump said Iran is in no position to play around with the U.S. because his crushing blockade is eating into Iran’s oil revenue and exacerbating economic problems Iran had even before the war.
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The Iranian rial was trading at approximately 1.8 million to 1 U.S. dollar on the free market Tuesday, having lost roughly a third of its value since the war began.
“Their economy is crashing,” Mr. Trump said. “I hope it fails. You know why? Because I want to win.”
The U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, diminish its missile program and prevent it from supporting terrorist proxies in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump repeated his view that striking first was necessary to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
“Maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now. I can tell you, the Middle East would have been gone, Israel would have been gone, and they would have trained their sights on Europe first and then us,” Mr. Trump said. “Because they’re sick people, these are sick people, and we’re not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.”
Mr. Rubio said part of the difficulty in reaching a deal is that some of Iran’s top leaders are “insane in the brain,” and they offer dubious claims about why they want to enrich uranium.
He said Iran, unlike other nations, is secretive about its enrichment and cannot be trusted.
“These guys do it in mountains and in caves and in hiding,” Mr. Rubio said.
Iran has enriched uranium to 60% uranium-235, far beyond the 3% to 5% needed for civilian nuclear power and well into what the International Atomic Energy Agency classifies as highly enriched uranium. Experts say 99% of the enrichment work needed to reach weapons-grade levels of 90% has already been completed at 60%, though Iran has not yet crossed that final threshold.”
Mr. Trump said Iran had not met his terms for preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Yet so far, he has not renewed strikes on Iran’s territory.
The president, speaking in the Oval Office, said U.S. forces are “doing very well” against Iran.
“We’ve basically wiped out their military in about two weeks,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Hegseth said Iran’s remaining naval forces consist of the swarm of small boats it has deployed against commercial vessels trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. is dealing with those smaller boats during Project Freedom.
Some U.S. allies and some voters at home want to wind down the war, citing the economic fallout.
The national average price of a gallon of gas stood at $4.48 on Tuesday, a 40-cent increase from a week ago and nearly $1.50 higher than at the start of the war on Feb. 28, according to the AAA motor club.
Mr. Trump said the economic squeeze will ease and be worth preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf suggested Tuesday that Iran is poised to withstand more pain than the U.S.
“We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America,” he wrote, “while we have not even begun yet.”
Mr. Araghchi traveled to Beijing, marking his first meeting with the Chinese since the start of the war.
He is meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss bilateral relations and “regional and international developments,” according to a statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry posted on Telegram.
The meeting is part of a broader diplomatic tour that Mr. Araghchi has undertaken over the past few weeks. The diplomat has visited Oman, Pakistan and Russia and met with other foreign ministers and leaders to discuss the war.
Mr. Araghchi’s visit is one week before Mr. Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was postponed because of the war.
Beijing is a strategic partner of Tehran, making the subject thorny, but Mr. Trump said he is on the same page as Mr. Xi.
“We get along well,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s been very nice about this, in all fairness.”
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.