About 24 hours after unveiling “Project Freedom” in a bid to unplug the Strait of Hormuz and get maritime traffic flowing again, President Donald Trump pulled the plug on the mission Monday night.
Negotiations with Iran were going well, Trump asserted, and because other countries believed a suspension of the naval operation would further strengthen the diplomatic process, he decided the move was worth pursuing. The reversal was likely a bit awkward for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who spent most of his morning press conference at the Pentagon explaining why Project Freedom was so necessary.
Why did the initiative collapse? And could it be brought back from the dead if negotiations bog down again?
Project Freedom was, in essence, an attempt by the United States to improve the shipping industry’s confidence in the security environment. It was intended to be a less-risky method for the U.S. military to return to the pre-war status quo without having to order the Navy to clear out the area by force. As explained by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, the U.S. military would establish a defensive shield using naval and air assets over a southerly route through the strait, close to Oman’s territorial waters, with dozens of fighter aircraft on standby to intervene and shoot down Iranian missiles and drones if needed.
If the U.S. were able to assure that tankers and other vessels clogged in the regional choke point could continue their journeys without Iranian interference, Washington could severely hamper Tehran’s strongest card — keeping a lid over the Strait of Hormuz and, consequently, keeping oil prices in the triple digits.
Unfortunately for Trump, it’s easier for the Iranians to keep the choke point closed than it is for the Americans to force it open.
The Iranians, however, realized very early on that a mission such as this, if carried out successfully, would be a huge dent in their ability to retain leverage over the U.S. and its partners in the Middle East during a time when the war is merely paused, not over. So Tehran had an incentive to make sure the Trump administration’s operation failed, both as a way of retaining what power it held and to send a signal to Trump himself that there was no way of reopening the strait — short of ending the war for good. And sure enough, this is precisely what Tehran did. In the early hours, Iran resumed missile attacks against the United Arab Emirates, utilized drones to strike ships and sought to harass U.S. merchant vessels that were being guided out of the area by the U.S. military.
On Monday, the U.S. destroyed six Iranian small attack boats, the first direct engagement between U.S. and Iranian forces since before the April 7 ceasefire.
Unfortunately for Trump, it’s easier for the Iranians to keep the choke point closed than it is for the Americans to force it open. This is not because the Iranian navy is stronger or more capable than what the U.S. can field, or that Tehran’s coastal defenses are indefatigable, but rather because corporations tend to be risk-averse creatures that are sensitive to the threat environment. Most shipping companies are not going to risk their reputations, their very expensive wares and the lives of their employees if there is a decent possibility of getting hit by a missile or stopped by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The numbers bear this out — weekly passages through the strait reportedly dropped 11% over the past week, and only two U.S. merchant ships transited the area in the 24 hours Project Freedom was in effect.
Iran has learned well how to muck up the situation to the point global shipping is forced to a standstill.
The Trump administration’s maritime security initiative fell short for another reason: The assumptions behind it were flawed from the start. Trump obviously hoped that returning the strait back to normality would change the balance of power on the high seas and thereby increase the prospect of the Iranians signing a deal on Washington’s terms. But the exact opposite happened.
Instead, what the U.S. viewed as a humanitarian measure was perceived in Iran as U.S. escalation. And Tehran responded accordingly with escalation of its own, lobbing a few missiles into the UAE, just as it did during the first five weeks of the war. A few days of this tit-for-tat would have not only ballooned oil prices to an even higher level, but also had the chance of undermining whatever indirect, back-channel talks that are occurring between U.S. and Iranian officials. In other words, Project Freedom was working at cross-purposes with the Trump administration’s diplomatic objectives.
Of course, whether Washington and Tehran can reach an agreement is a whole other story. Reports suggest that both are eyeing a short, one-page negotiating framework that would lift the U.S. and Iranian blockades over a span of 30 days and leave the more technical haggling about Tehran’s nuclear program for a later date. Meanwhile, Trump is claiming progress yet again, even as he continues to threaten a new bombing campaign if Iran doesn’t sign a deal.
In which case, perhaps we will see the resurrection of Project Freedom in the not-so-distant future.
Daniel R. DePetris
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.