Hegseth says blockade of Iranian ports and ships now “global,” will remain in place during negotiations

Pete Hegseth | MGN

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stressed on Friday the strength of the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and vessels linked to the Islamic Republic, saying it had gone “global.”

“This growing blockade has also gone global. Just this week, we seized two Iranian dark fleet ships in the Indo-Pacific region that had left Iranian ports before the blockade went into effect,” Hegseth said. “They thought they’d made it out just in time. They did not. We seized their sanctioned ships, and we will seize more. Our blockade is growing and going global.”

Hegseth said the number of Iranian ships prevented from exiting the Strait of Hormuz by U.S. forces had risen to 34, an increase of one since Thursday evening.

The secretary repeated the president’s rhetoric from Thursday, when Mr. Trump said he had “all the time in the world” to make a deal with Iran, and the defense secretary urged Tehran to come to the negotiating table with a meaningful proposal to end the war.

“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely. As we said previously, choose wisely at the negotiating table,” he said. “All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon — and in meaningful and verifiable ways. Or instead, they can watch their regime’s fragile economic state collapse under the unrelenting pressure of American power. A blockade as long as it takes. Whatever President Trump decides.”