\nReopening Strait of Hormuz not core objective of Operation Epic Fury, says White House, Nicola Willis ‘disappointed that New Zealand is bearing the brunt’\n<\/p>\n
The White House is standing by its core objectives for Operation Epic Fury, which it says does not include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, as ongoing disruption to the oil route pushes up fuel costs in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Asked about reopening the Strait of Hormuz not being a core objective for the United States, Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she remained \u201cdisappointed that New Zealand is bearing the brunt of a conflict that is not of our making\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a recent press conference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by a Wall Street Journal journalist: \u201cWould President Trump declare victory and wind down military operations if the core objectives are met, but still passage remains quite slow through the Strait?\u201d<\/p>\n
Leavitt listed the core objectives of \u2018Operation Epic Fury\u2019 as: Destroying the Iranian Navy, destroying their ballistic missiles, dismantling their defence industrial infrastructure and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe full reopening of the Strait is something the administration is working towards, but the core objectives of the operation have been clearly defined for the American people by the Commander-in-Chief [President Donald Trump].\u201d<\/p>\n
Willis said it was \u201cgoing to damage the world the longer that Strait is closed, and it is leading to high petrol and diesel prices and damage to our families, our businesses and our economy\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Zealand continues to call for negotiations and for conflict to end, because the sooner it ends, the better it is for Kiwis and their cost of living.<\/p>\n
“I’m yet to meet a New Zealander who says, \u2018Thank you for the conflict,” Willis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reopening Strait of Hormuz not core objective of Operation Epic Fury, says White House, Nicola Willis ‘disappointed that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-356335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}