blockading<\/a> Iranian ports and mounting escorted transits for commercial vessels.<\/p>\nWhile Rubio was speaking, Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations agency reported that a cargo vessel had been struck by a projectile in the strait. Further details of the incident were not immediately available.<\/p>\n
![\"Secretary]()
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday. Rubio said the U.S. had largely accomplished its military objectives in the Iran war. (Photo: Evan Vucci, Reuters)<\/p>\n
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier on Tuesday that the U.S. had successfully secured a path through the waterway and that hundreds of commercial ships were lining up to pass through. The 4-week-old truce with Iran was not over, he added.<\/p>\n
“Right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely,” he said.<\/p>\n
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint \u200cChiefs of Staff, said Iranian attacks against U.S. forces fell “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.”<\/p>\n
Asked what Iran would need \u200bto do to violate the ceasefire, Trump said: “They know what not to do.”<\/p>\n
‘Right to respond’<\/p>\n
Shortly after Hegseth spoke, the UAE’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses were again dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran, though Iran’s joint military command denied carrying out attacks.<\/p>\n
The UAE’s Foreign Ministry said the attacks were a serious escalation and posed a direct threat to the country’s security, adding that the Gulf Arab state reserved its “full and legitimate right” to respond.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejected Abu Dhabi’s statements, saying its armed forces’ actions have been solely aimed at repelling American aggression.<\/p>\n
After issuing a new map of the narrow strait with an expanded Iranian area of control, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned vessels to stick to the corridors they had set or face a “decisive response.”<\/p>\n
The military said on Monday that two U.S. merchant ships made it through the strait, without saying when, while shipping company Maersk said the Alliance Fairfax, a U.S.-flagged ship, exited the Gulf under U.S. military \u200bescort on Monday.<\/p>\n
Iran denied any crossings had taken place.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s mediation efforts continue<\/p>\n
The war has killed thousands as it has spread beyond Iran to Lebanon and the Gulf, and roiled the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that \u200ceven if the \u200cconflict ended immediately, it would take three to \u2060four months to deal with the consequences.<\/p>\n
Rubio said 10 civilian sailors were among those who had died in the ongoing conflict, adding that crew on vessels stranded in the waterway were “starving” and “isolated.”<\/p>\n
There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first.\u2013Marco Rubio, secretary of state<\/p>\n
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Iran’s military had been reduced to firing “peashooters” and Tehran wanted peace, despite public saber rattling.<\/p>\n
The conflict is also pressuring Trump’s administration ahead of crucial midterm elections in November, as rising gas prices hit voters’ pockets.<\/p>\n
Trump has said the U.S.-Israeli attacks aimed to eliminate what he called imminent threats from Iran, citing its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for Hamas and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have \u200cyet to yield results. U.S. and Iranian officials have \u200bheld one round of face-to-face peace talks, but attempts to set up further meetings have failed.<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi \u200csaid peace talks were still progressing with Pakistan’s mediation.<\/p>\n
He \u2060was traveling to Beijing on Tuesday for talks \u200bwith his Chinese counterpart, his ministry said. Trump is also due to visit China this month.<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would briefly pause an operation to help escort ships…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[551,550,3528,553,102,559,552,558,179,42,81,555,556,549,101,554,547,557,548],"class_list":{"0":"post-99931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-classifieds","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-homes","12":"tag-hormuz","13":"tag-international","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-radio","20":"tag-salt-lake","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","23":"tag-television","24":"tag-traffic","25":"tag-utah","26":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116525743636835693","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99931","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=99931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}