US said hoping to resume Hormuz naval escorts as it awaits Iran’s response to peace offer

Project Freedom could renew after Saudi Arabia, Kuwait lift restrictions on US using its airspace, bases, WSJ reports; White House said expecting response to latest offer by Friday

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have lifted restrictions on the US military’s use of their bases and airspace that were imposed after the launch of a US operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, potentially paving the way for the effort to begin afresh in the coming days, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing US and Saudi officials.

Meanwhile, Iran has yet to respond to the latest proposal from Washington to end the war, saying that it is still reviewing the offer that US President Donald Trump has characterized as Tehran’s final chance to prevent a renewed military campaign.

US officials cited by The Wall Street Journal said that with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait agreeing to lift restrictions, Washington was now seeking to resume “Project Freedom,” the naval operation to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, after Trump announced earlier this week that he was pausing the mission less than two days after it began amid Pakistani-mediated negotiations with Iran.

Saudi officials told the outlet that Riyadh and Kuwait decided to prevent the US military from using their bases and airspace after senior officials in Washington downplayed the attacks launched by Iran on the Gulf in response to the operation, prompting concern that US forces may not protect them.

The US military announced the launch of Project Freedom on Sunday with the goal of restoring freedom of navigation for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been blocked to almost all traffic since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran on February 28.

Even after the fighting entered a truce on April 8, Iran maintained its tight grip over the Strait of Hormuz, choking off some 20 percent of the world’s oil shipments and prompting the US to launch its own blockade on Iran-linked shipping on April 13.

The latest US naval operation in the key waterway had sparked fears that fighting would resume, after Iran launched new attacks on the United Arab Emirates and the US fired on Iranian vessels.

But before the fears could be realized, Trump announced that he was pausing the operation less than 48 hours after it began, ostensibly due to “great progress” in Pakistani-mediated peace talks with Iran.

The talks have faltered over Iran’s nuclear program and the postwar control of the Strait of Hormuz.

NBC News reported Thursday, however, that Trump halted the naval operation due to opposition from Saudi Arabia, which wouldn’t let American aircraft involved in the effort use the kingdom’s airspace.

Riyadh denied that this was the case, although the subsequent Wall Street Journal report, if correct, contradicts the denial.

Neither side has given any indication that they are willing to budge over the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, and on Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the CIA believes Iran can withstand the US naval blockade for at least three or four months before severe economic hardship takes hold.

“The leadership has gotten more radical, determined and increasingly confident they can outlast US political will and sustain domestic repression to check any resistance” inside Iran, said a US official. “Comparatively, you see similar regimes lasting years under sustained embargoes and airpower-only wars.”

Iran has also managed to retain 75% of its mobile missile launchers and 70% of its missiles, according to the document cited in the report, which is consistent with other reports on the matter. Almost all of its underground storage facilities have reportedly been restored and reopened as well.

Adding to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, shipping data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence said Thursday that Iran had established a new government agency to approve transit and collect tolls from shipping in the waterway.

The move has raised concerns about eroding the freedom of navigation on which global trade depends.

The agency, called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, is “positioning itself as the only valid authority to grant permission to ships transiting the strait,” Lloyd’s reported in an online briefing. Lloyd’s said the authority had emailed it an application form for ships seeking passage.

The Iranian effort to formalize control over the channel comes as hundreds of commercial ships remain bottled up in the Persian Gulf and are unable to reach the open sea.

The UN Maritime Organization estimates that around 1,500 ships and their crews are trapped in the Gulf due to the blockade, the body’s secretary general said in Panama on Thursday.

“Right now, we have approximately 20,000 crewmen and around 1,500 ships trapped,” Arsenio Dominguez told the Maritime Convention of the Americas.

Dominguez said that maritime shipping moves over 80% of total consumed products in the world.

The stranded crew members “are innocent people who are doing their jobs every day for the benefit of other countries,” but “are trapped by geopolitical situations outside their control,” Dominguez told the gathering of industry executives and IMO representatives.

US awaits Iran’s response to proposal for ending war

As of Thursday evening, Iran had yet to respond to the latest US proposal to end the war, saying it was still reviewing the offer.

The proposal, according to an Axios report on Wednesday, includes a moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment and provides for the shipment of highly enriched uranium stockpiles out of the country, in exchange for Washington lifting some of its sanctions on Tehran and releasing billions in the Islamic Republic’s frozen funds.

In addition, both sides would lift restrictions on transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Axios later reported that the document includes a clause stating that the deal “would end the war throughout the region, including in Lebanon.”

The plan would also declare an end to the war and trigger a 30-day negotiation period, in pursuit of more detailed agreements pertaining to the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear program and US sanctions against the regime.

A senior US official told Channel 12 that the White House was expecting an answer from Tehran by Friday, but in reality would grant it a few extra days of leeway as Trump visits China next week.

But if no deal is reached before Trump returns from Beijing next weekend, the military option will be back on the table, the official said.

Trump’s top envoy Steve Witkoff will not join the president on his China trip to allow him to continue working on the deal with Iran, the official added.

While the US is hoping Iran will find the current proposal acceptable, Channel 12 reported that Israel is less than impressed by it.

Speaking to the outlet, a senior Israeli official said Jerusalem was worried about the direction that talks with Iran are heading in.

“A deal like this is not signed with vague statements, but with precision, technical details, processes, timetables, oversight mechanisms and the like,” said the official of the one-page agreement reportedly under discussion.

“By not going into the nitty-gritty of every one of those issues, the Iranians will find easy paths for a renewed nuclear foothold.”

The official told Channel 12 that Israel does not believe that the US is going to push hard for Iran to agree to limits on its ballistic missile program.

To that end, the outlet reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would speak to Trump on Thursday night after a meeting with top aides at the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu and the IDF have reiterated in recent days that Israel will follow Trump’s lead on Iran, but is ready to resume striking targets as soon as the need arises.

Iraqi oil official sanctioned for aiding Iran

While US sanctions on Iran could soon be up for discussion if the deal is finalized, there was no such luck for Iraq on Thursday, as the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against the country’s deputy oil minister and militias over support for Iran.

The Treasury Department accused Iraq’s deputy minister Ali Maarij Al-Bahadly of abusing “his position to facilitate the diversion of oil to be sold for the benefit of the Iranian regime and its proxy militias in Iraq.”

It said Maarij enabled an Iran-affiliated oil smuggler to mix Iranian oil with Iraqi oil before being shipped to global markets and falsified documents that helped Iranian-affiliated networks to sell the mix disguised as purely Iraqi oil. It said Maarij authorized trucking several million dollars’ worth of oil per day from Iraq’s Qayyarah oil field for export, helping Iranian networks.

Iraq’s oil ministry and the deputy minister did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In March, Iraq’s oil minister, Hayan Abdel-Ghani, said Iranian oil tankers stopped by US forces in the Gulf were using forged Iraqi documents. Tehran denied using such documents.

The US Treasury is also sanctioning three senior leaders of Iran-aligned militias Kata’ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada and Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, it said.

“Treasury will not stand idly by as Iran’s military exploits Iraqi oil to fund terrorism against the United States and our partners,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

The sanctions freeze any US assets of those targeted and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.