The Alliance Fairfax, a towering black and white car-carrier ship that had been stranded in the Persian Gulf for over two months, was finally making a break for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are all set to go,\u201d a U.S. military officer radioed as the ship glided through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday and swung around the peninsula at the northern end of Oman. \u201cSafe travels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, Iran<\/a> launched a barrage of missiles and drones<\/a> at commercial ships, at the U.S. Navy\u2014and at one of America\u2019s allies, the United Arab Emirates, where an oil transit hub was set ablaze. U.S. helicopters sank Iranian speedboats, and Iranian drones hit a civilian ship.<\/p>\n The intervening hours included the most serious escalation in the conflict since President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April. <\/p>\n Then, almost as quickly as it started, Trump directed the U.S. operation<\/a> to guide ships through the strait to be put on pause. Only two vessels are known to have made it through when the president halted operations Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the project began. Ship traffic, already a trickle, again ground to a halt.<\/p>\n The short-lived exercise, known as \u201cProject Freedom,\u201d exposed the limits of Trump\u2019s ability to maneuver<\/a> in the region. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, spooked by fear of an escalation and as Washington played down Iran\u2019s attacks, withdrew permission for the U.S. military to use bases and airspace critical to the mission, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Phone calls between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman led to a restoration of permission<\/a>, according to Saudi and U.S. officials.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a92026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alliance Fairfax, a towering black and white car-carrier ship that had been stranded in the Persian Gulf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[45593,5959,488,45592,5955,45594,5966,197,19449,34,45596,45595,45598,45601,45600,45599,45597,49,857,1284,5958,1488,1737,39,5975,5957,5976,19456,5965,51,5967],"class_list":["post-138095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-a-p-moeller-maersk-series-b","tag-armed-forces","tag-asia","tag-bfe-mustread","tag-developing-economies","tag-dkmaersk-b","tag-gcapi","tag-general-news","tag-gfx-contrib","tag-iran","tag-linkendrnrealtime-linkedarticle-dnco20260507021520","tag-linkendrnrealtime-linkedarticle-dnco20260508001751","tag-linki1-wp-wsj-0003562216","tag-linki3-wp-wsj-0003562216","tag-linki4-wp-wsj-0003562216","tag-linki5-wp-wsj-0003562216","tag-linki7-wp-wsj-0003562216","tag-middle-east","tag-middle-east-and-north-africa","tag-national","tag-national-public-security","tag-navy","tag-north-america","tag-persian-gulf","tag-political","tag-political-general-news","tag-public-security","tag-risk-topics-geopolitics","tag-synd","tag-united-states","tag-wsj-pro-wsj-com"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}