By Kevin Liptak, Adam Cancryn, Zachary Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s initiative to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz was a high-stakes, high-risk attempt to jolt loose a resolution to the standoff that had come to define his war against Iran.
But the gambit has put the US’ fragile ceasefire with Iran under strain, as US and Iranian forces traded fire in the contested waterway. Now, no one is entirely sure whether the tenuous peace can hold long enough for halting negotiations to yield some resolution.
“It is very bad and messy at the moment,” a regional source told CNN.
With little sign Tehran would blink in its efforts to block traffic through the waterway, Trump had grown frustrated at the deadlock in the strait. High gas prices and a looming visit to China both created pressure to find a way to get vessels moving.
So from his golf course in Florida on Sunday, Trump announced a plan for the US to help guide certain ships through the strait, dubbed “Project Freedom.” The risks soon became apparent. Booms reverberated in Dubai as Iranian missiles were intercepted for the first time since a truce went into effect nearly a month ago. The US military destroyed six Iranian small boats, US Central Command said. (A report by an Iranian state media outlet disputed that the boats had been sunk.)
The open-ended ceasefire appeared to be stretching to its limit, without clear evidence a negotiated settlement may be near. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Trump’s foreign envoy Steve Witkoff would only say of talks with Iran: “We’re in conversation.”
Some of Trump’s allies have encouraged him to resume the bombing campaign inside Iran, arguing the US has already weakened the regime and insisting the time was ripe to further degrade its military capabilities.
“I hope this conflict can end diplomatically, but it is now time to regain freedom of navigation and forcefully respond to Iran if they insist on terrorizing the world,” GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham wrote on X this weekend.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Israeli sources say is planning a trip to Washington to visit Trump in the near future, convened security meetings Monday. Officials signaled in Israeli media afterward that the country was prepared to resume a bombing campaign.
Despite the hostilities, it was not clear whether Trump had the appetite to resume full-scale bombing inside Iran. He shrugged off a damaged South Korean ship as from an “unrelated Nation” and claimed otherwise there had been “no damage going through the Strait.” He similarly told ABC News of Iran’s drone and missile attacks, “One got through. Not huge damage.”
But he also warned in a phone interview with Fox News that Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth” if it targets US ships.
“I wouldn’t go into details of whether the ceasefire is over or not,” Adm. Bradley Cooper, head of US Central Command, told reporters Monday. “I think the key thing is, for us, is we’re merely there as a defensive force and to give a very thick layer of defense to comme