Hegseth: Transit Through Strait of Hormuz Is Limited Because ‘Iran Is Doing Irresponsible Things’

TRANSCRIPT:

HEGSETH: "First of all, a we are seeing vessels transiting. There are paths that are open, and part of what the president is threatening is ensuring, if there’s attempts to lay — recklessly and irresponsibly lay more mines, were gonna deal with that. It's a  violation of the ceasefire. So transit is occurring, much more limited than anybody would like to see and with more risk than people would like to see, but that’s because Iran is doing irresponsible things with small fastboats, crafts, like I said, with weapons on them. These are commercial ships, in some cases cruise ship’s crew ships that came through being threatened by these. So, as far as breaching the blockade, it’s been pretty consistent, a number of ships at the beginning, then you had the interdiction that the chairman described, where we took out the engine room and disabled that ship. I think that sent a very clear sign that this is not a fake blockade, this is a real, full blockade we'll use up to and including lethal force if necessary, and that stopped and other ships have taken note of that. So any of the ships that have attempted, there’s been levels of escalation, but none that far and they’ve turned around, absolutely."