WASHINGTON, May 5. /TASS/. The United States assumes that the ceasefire with Iran remains in effect, despite the US military operation in the Strait of Hormuz, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at a briefing.
“No, the ceasefire is not over,” he stated. “Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project,” Hegseth pointed out, referring to the operation in the Strait of Hormuz. “Ultimately, the president is going to make a decision whether anything were to escalate into a violation of a ceasefire. But certainly we would urge Iran to be prudent in the actions that they take, to keep that underneath this threshold [of breaking the ceasefire],” the Pentagon chief noted. “Right now, the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely, absolutely,” Hegseth stressed.
On May 3, Trump said that the United States will launch an operation Project Freedom to help ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz to leave its waters. According to Trump, the operation will focus on the safe evacuation of ships from the strait. However, he warned that “if, in any way, this humanitarian process is interfered with, that interference will, unfortunately, have to be dealt with forcefully.”
Following this statement, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, warned that Tehran will view any US attempt to interfere into maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz as a ceasefire violation. “The Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf would not be managed by Trump’s delusional posts!” he wrote on his X page.
