the US Secretary of the Navy would depart his post “effective immediately”<\/a>.<\/p>\nNo reason was given for John Phelan’s ouster. It comes just weeks after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Army Chief of Staff Randy George to step down from his post. Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will serve as acting secretary.<\/p>\n
The White House lack of a timeline – either for a return to negotiations in Pakistan or to kinetic strikes against Iran – is likely strategic. It gives the Trump administration significant flexibility to let the blockade and the economic stranglehold on Iran bite.<\/p>\n
Leavitt said this will allow “pragmatists” in Iran to come up with a peace proposal without pushback from hardliners.<\/p>\n
At the same time, it allows Trump to avoid a return to full-scale military action that many Americans are weary of, and that could upset already nervous global markets.<\/p>\n
“The strategic disadvantage at the moment is that Iran has decided that the measure of victory has become control of the Strait of Hormuz,” said Andrew Peek, a former State Department deputy assistant secretary.<\/p>\n
The “bright side”, he told the BBC is that “President Trump has managed the stock market effectively, though gas prices have ticked up about a dollar in some places.”<\/p>\n
In her remarks to reporters at the White House, Leavitt also said that the US does not consider Iran’s seizure of two ships in the Strait of Hormuz to be a violation of the ceasefire. <\/p>\n
“These were not US ships, these were not Israeli ships,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, MarineTraffic data indicates Euphoria returned to sailing southwards after the reported time it was attacked, ending up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-545703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}