The United States will deploy destroyers, aircraft and thousands of troops to Project Freedom, which will escort merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The Central Command of the US Army (CENTCOM) announced this on its website on Sunday. Sky News reported about it.
- The United States will deploy destroyers, aircraft and thousands of troops in the Strait of Hormuz.
- Project Sloboda includes more than a hundred planes, drones and fifteen thousand soldiers.
- The operation is part of the Maritime Freedom Construct initiative to restore safe navigation.
- Project Sloboda is supposed to bring out stranded merchant ships of non-participants in the war with Iran.
- Iran will mark the US intervention in the Strait of Hormuz as a violation of the ceasefire.
“US military support for Project Freedom will include guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft operating from land and sea, multi-role unmanned platforms and 15,000 troops,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
The goal is safety
“Our support of this defense mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we maintain a naval blockade,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM.
The operation will be led by the State Department and CENTCOM as part of the Maritime Freedom Construct (MFC), a new US-led international initiative to restore freedom of navigation and security in the Strait of Hormuz. It is a broader diplomatic-military framework that covers specific operations such as Project Freedom.
Cruise recovery plan
Its launch was announced on Sunday by US President Donald Trump. The local one will start on Monday morning, and its goal is to take commercial ships stuck in the Persian Gulf as a result of the war with Iran through the Strait of Hormuz. However, it only applies to ships from countries not involved in this conflict.
The chairman of the committee for national security and foreign policy of the Iranian parliament, Ebrahim Azizí, said in response that Tehran would consider any US interference in the traffic of ships through the Strait of Hormuz as a violation of the ceasefire.
Stoppage of shipping
The Strait of Hormuz is almost impassable due to the war with Iran, which broke out on February 28. Previously, approximately 20 percent of oil and liquefied natural gas was transported there. Bloomberg agency reported over the weekend, citing ship tracking data, that shipping in the strait has almost completely stopped.
Iran’s IRNA news agency reported on Friday, without further details, that on Thursday night Tehran handed over its latest 14-point plan to end the war to Pakistan, which is acting as a mediator in talks with the United States. On Saturday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he would examine the proposal but could not imagine it would be acceptable. Iran’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that the US had delivered its response and Tehran was analyzing it in detail.
