Topline<\/p>\n
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. will continue its naval blockade of Iran-linked ships \u201cas long as it takes\u201d to accomplish its objectives in Iran, but insisted the war won\u2019t be \u201cendless\u201d\u2014making a series of vague and contradictory statements about when the operation will conclude as the conflict enters its ninth week. <\/p>\n
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2026. (Photo by ANNABELLE GORDON \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
AFP via Getty ImagesKey Facts<\/p>\n
Hegseth said the U.S. naval blockade is \u201cgrowing and going global\u201d in a press conference Friday, telling reporters the U.S. has redirected 34 ships since the operation began on April 13. <\/p>\n
He said it will continue for \u201cas long as it takes, whatever President Trump decides,\u201d but insisted the conflict wouldn\u2019t be \u201cendless\u201d and the U.S. is \u201canxious for a deal\u201d with Iran.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging Iran has laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz, he said traffic is \u201cmuch more limited than anybody would like to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. will continue its naval blockade of Iran-linked ships \u201cas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,42,87,117780,43,31348,40,38,41,39,39984],"class_list":["post-408703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}