President Trump issued a blunt warning to Iran on Monday. Attack American ships, he said, and the response will be devastating.
Speaking with Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, the president said Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth” if it moves against U.S. vessels operating under Project Freedom, the new American-led mission to secure shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
The warning lands at a tense moment. U.S. forces have stepped up their presence in the Strait, where commercial traffic has been squeezed by the wider conflict, and where neutral shipping has become collateral in a fight it did not pick.
But Trump paired the threat with something else, something quieter. A note of cautious optimism. Iran, he said, has grown “much more malleable” in peace talks. The pressure, in other words, may be working. Tehran may be listening.
Still, the president was careful not to sound as if he were easing up.
“We have more weapons and ammunition at a much higher grade than we had before,” he said.
“We have the best equipment.”
He spoke of America’s reach, of bases stretched across the globe, fully stocked, fully ready. “We have stuff all over the world. We have these bases all over the world. They’re all stocked up with equipment. We can use all of that stuff, and we will, if we need it.”
Project Freedom is the administration’s answer to a problem that grew quickly. It is a U.S.-led military and security operation, ordered by the president, to keep the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding sea lanes open as the Iran conflict drags on.
The president announced the mission on Sunday on TRUTH Social, framing it as a response to pleas from abroad.
“Countries from all over the World, almost all of which are not involved in the Middle Eastern dispute going on so visibly, and violently, for all to see, have asked the United States if we could help free up their Ships, which are locked up in the Strait of Hormuz, on something which they have absolutely nothing to do with — They are merely neutral and innocent bystanders!”
“This process, Project Freedom, will begin Monday morning, Middle East time,” he wrote.
And so it has.
