A Pentagon briefing on Iran Tuesday took a bizarre turn when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was forced to deny a claim that Iran has trained marine dolphins to conduct suicide attacks against U.S. forces and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking at a press briefing at the Pentagon alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine, Hegseth was asked about “reports of kamikaze dolphins” that have appeared in some news outlets after Iran claimed it could use previously unused weapons in the two-month-old conflict. The BBC reported in 2000 that Tehran once purchased dolphins that had been trained for military operations.
Caine at first looked incredulous and said, “I haven’t heard the kamikaze dolphins thing” before joking, ‘You mean like sharks with laser beams?” a reference to the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, in which Mike Myers’ character Dr. Evil complains that he could not acquire “sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads” and was forced to settle for laser-equipped “mutant sea bass.”
Hegseth then fielded the question, which appeared to emanate from an earlier Wall Street Journal report on Iran grasping for ways to break the Trump blockade of the strait.
“I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they [Iran] don’t,” Hegseth said.
The defense secretary added: “That’s what it is.”
The madcap exchange came minutes after Hegseth had claimed the U.S. operation to protect commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz is a “separate and distinct” one from the more than two-month-old war against Iran launched by President Donald Trump, and warned Tehran against attacking any American or international commercial traffic transiting the key waterway.
Hegseth told reporters that the mission, dubbed “Project Freedom” by the Defense Department, is meant to “restart the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz” amid skyrocketing petroleum prices as a result of Iran’s effective closing of the strait.
“To be clear, this operation is separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury. Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration, with one mission, protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression,” he said.
Hegseth also told reporters that American forces participating in Project Freedom will not enter Iranian airspace or territorial waters, describing such actions as “not necessary.”
“We're not looking for a fight. But Iran also cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway. Iran is the clear aggressor, harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation indiscriminately and weaponizing a critical choke point for its own financial benefit,” he said.
He described Tehran’s attempts to charge tolls for safe passage through the choke point as “international extortion” that “ends with Project Freedom” putting a “powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait” in the form of U.S. destroyers, along with “hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones and surveillance aircraft, providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels.”
Paradoxically, the Pentagon boss also said the U.S. “ironclad blockade” against Iran “remains in full effect”, even as he repeated the administration's claim, first floated last week, that the shaky ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran “is not over.”
The defense secretary’s assertion that the new U.S. operation is “separate and distinct” from the ongoing war and blockade comes days after the war the administration has called Operation Epic Fury reached the 60-day mark, triggering a requirement that Trump obtain Congress’ consent to continue operations or withdraw U.S. forces.
Trump sent House and Senate leaders a letter on Friday claiming that the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran had “terminated” even as the blockade, which is an act of war under international law, continues.
A Vietnam War-era law, the War Powers Resolution, requires the president to seek and obtain permission from the U.S. legislature to continue any hostilities after 60 days, with provision for a single 30-day extension for the sole purpose of withdrawing troops from those hostilities.
The president and his top aides initially claimed that the ceasefire with Iran paused that 60-day deadline despite there being no legal or historical precedent for such an interpretation of the decades-old law.
Yet even as he claimed the war with Iran was effectively over, Hegseth said Trump reserves the right to restart fighting anew and said U.S. forces remain “locked and loaded to defend our people, our ships, our aircraft and this mission without hesitation” while working to protect shipping.
He also described the U.S. mission in the strait as “temporary” and argued that “our partners, allies, and the rest of the world” must “step up at the appropriate time” to take over protection of commercial shipping.
For his part, Trump has threatened that Iran will “be blown off the face of the earth” if U.S. vessels guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz are attacked, escalating his threats to eliminate Iranian civilization as the countries test a tenuous ceasefire during the weeks-long war.
He also announced on Truth Social that Tehran had “taken some shots at unrelated Nations with respect to the Ship Movement”, including one South Korea-flagged vessel, while urging Seoul to “come and join the mission.”
“We’ve shot down seven small Boats or, as they like to call them, ‘fast’ Boats. It’s all they have left,” he wrote. “Other than the South Korean Ship, there has been, at this moment, no damage going through the Strait.”
When announcing the new U.S. effort on Sunday, Trump said the mission would “free up people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong” for what he described as a “humanitarian gesture” to restart maritime traffic through the strait.
“They are merely neutral and innocent bystanders! For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these Countries that we will guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways, so that they can freely and ably get on with their business,” he wrote.
The operation will deploy 15,000 troops, more than 100 aircraft and guided-missile destroyers, according to U.S. Central Command.
The U.S. gambit to reopen the waterway to maritime commercial traffic comes as Americans have overwhelmingly soured on Trump and his Republican Party’s handling of the U.S. economy amid skyrocketing fuel prices as a result of the war he started.
A Washington Post and ABC News poll released on Sunday showed Trump garnering 66 percent disapproval on the matter of the Iran war, while an even larger 76 percent of respondents said they disapprove of how he has dealt with rising prices, compared to 23 percent who have approved.
Around 65 percent of respondents said they disapprove of his handling of the American economy, with 72 percent singling him out for disapproval on how he’s handled inflation.
Yet Trump has shrugged off the plummeting poll numbers and told attendees at an event in Florida over the weekend that he’d start the war with Iran again if he had a chance to repeat the last few months over.
“I would do it again, but I thought the numbers would be much worse. I thought the stock market would go down much more. I thought the oil prices would go up much more,” he said.
According to the American Automobile Association, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $4.44, nearly $1.50 higher than this time last year.
Trump dismissed the price increases as temporary and claimed at a White House event on Friday that the cost of gas will fall precipitously “as soon as the war is over.”
“It will drop like a rock. There’s so much of it. It’s all over the place, sitting all over the oceans of the world, and it’ll go down,” he said.
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