US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, 5th April 2026 announced the halting of the ‘Project Freedom’— two days after the operation was launched to aid ships that were stranded due to Iran’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz. The president said that the temporary pause on the US naval operation was owed to the ‘great progress’ the American administration has made with Iran in ‘mutual agreement’ regarding the end to hostilities between the two nations. 

In a statement posted on Truth Social, President Trump wrote that “Great progress has been made toward a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran.” He also stated that the decision has been taken ‘based on the request of Pakistan and other countries.’

The US blockade imposed upon Iranian ports will stay in place, Trump added. He said the pause would allow time to determine whether negotiations could successfully conclude with a formal agreement.

See also: Amid Project Freedom ruckus, Trump says he will ‘blow Iran off the face of the Earth’

Project Freedom, announced by President Trump on Sunday 3rd April, 2026, is a US central command operation that was launched amidst rising tensions and temporary disruption of the shipping trade through the Strait of Hormuz. As a ‘humanitarian gesture’, US ships would escort stranded commercial vessels safely through the region following reports of increased threats and instability.

The US president’s statement comes consequent to the remarks made by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Rubio said Operation Epic Fury— the US-Israel offensive on Iran— has concluded after having achieved its objectives.

“Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. We’re not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What Trump would prefer is a deal… that is, so far, not the route that Iran has chosen,” the trump-aide stated. 

Operation Epic Fury was a joint US-Israel offensive mission that was launched on Iran on February 28, 2026. As a wave of air strikes descended upon Iran, the nation retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping trade controlling one-fifth of the world's total oil trade, thus plunging the world into crisis and chaos.

See also: EAM Jaishankar meets Marco Rubio in France, has 'useful talk'

Explaining the reasoning behind Project Freedom, Rubio remarked the goal was to rescue nearly 23,000 civilians from 87 countries who were left stranded in the Persian Gulf. “This is not an offensive operation. This is a defensive operation, and what that means is very simple: there’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first. We’re not attacking them, but if they’re attacking us or a ship, we need to respond,” Rubio said.

Earlier this week, on 1st May 2025 Trump said that even though ‘they've already won’, he is aiming for better margins in regard to the Iran war. Speaking to the US media outlet Newsmax, Trump stated: “We’ve already won, but I want to win by a bigger margin.”

“We’ve destroyed everything. If we leave right now, it will take them 20 years to rebuild, if they ever could rebuild, but it’s actually not good enough,” the president said. “We have to have guarantees they will never have a nuclear weapon.”

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