RIP Project Freedom: Trump’s latest Iran plan didn’t make it past day two

It was already a confusing day in Washington. In the morning, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that Project Freedom – the US mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – was temporary, and the rest of the world would soon be called upon to take it over.

In the afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said only the US military could pull off such an operation, and it would do so as a “favour to the world”.

By the early evening, they were both wrong. Their mercurial boss, President Donald Trump, pulled the plug, announcing Project Freedom would be paused “for a short period of time”.

It had been going less than two full days. A little longer than Mal Meninga’s political career, yes, but not by much.

According to Hegseth, hundreds of ships from around the world were lined up and ready to take advantage of the protection of America’s “red, white and blue dome”. Two US-flagged ships had successfully cleared the strait. The Iranians were embarrassed, he said, because it showed they did not control the strait, contrary to their claims.

So, beyond the question of why Trump let his cabinet secretaries (and top military adviser) waste their time marketing this soon-to-be-jettisoned policy, there is the question of why he pressed pause at all.

The charitable view – which relies on the myth that Trump is always playing some form of 4D chess – is that this was always a ploy designed to be conceded to the Iranians in negotiations.

As Gregory Brew, an analyst on Iran and oil at the Eurasia Group, observed: “Trump would like to frame this as a successful pressure move to get the Iranians into a deal, but [it is] also entirely possible they realised no Gulf-trapped ships were going to use their route while the Iranians were actively shooting, so they pulled the plug.”

The US mission was a bit of a halfway house. Shipping companies were not promised a literal US Navy escort through the strait, but encouraged to make the journey through an “enhanced security area” on the southern side of the waterway, closer to Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, said 15,000 American service members were operating a squad of more than 100 fighter jets and other aircraft to provide “defensive overwatch” of the corridor.

“Commercial vessels that transit through the area will see, hear and frankly feel US combat power around them on the sea, in the skies and on the radio,” Caine said.

More ships were anticipated to make the journey in coming days, he added.

If that’s the case, it seems bizarre to hit pause now, before demonstrating to Tehran that one of their key instruments of leverage is about to disappear.

Trump likes to tell us the Iranians speak very differently in private to their bellicose public statements and propaganda. So, perhaps there really is an imminent breakthrough of which we are not fully aware.

But it is the US naval blockade on ships using Iranian ports that has really annoyed Iran and which has repeatedly been cited as a reason for stalled negotiations. Not the hours-old Project Freedom that was yet to actually prove itself.

Caitlin Talmadge, a foreign policy expert and associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called the reversal “mind-boggling”.

And Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies, said on X: “It’s hard to escape the sense that the administration simply does not have a coherent strategy for Iran, and that what we are witnessing instead is a form of strategic improvisation.”

We are used to Trump’s kneejerk diplomacy by now, but this instalment seems egregious – and baffling, with little explanation offered.

And it will be particularly difficult news for the thousands of crew members on board the vessels stranded at the strait, with Rubio warning on Tuesday (US time) they were running low on food and potable water, and 10 people had already died.

A large part of this stalemate is down to the shipping liners and their insurers. Iran is playing menace in the strait, but its attacks thus far have been pretty paltry. Still, it is difficult to send a ship and crew into such potential danger. Project Freedom was an attempt to overcome that hesitation.

Contrary to what Hegseth and Rubio portrayed as the US doing the world a solid out of sheer goodwill, this is Trump’s problem to solve. He has now abandoned another potential remedy with great haste, and with little sign that some grand bargain is at the ready.

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