Trump says it’s an ‘honor’ to keep Strait of Hormuz open for China and other countries
President Donald Trump said he wants to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, saying it would be an “honor” to do so in an effort to help other nations that rely on the vital Middle East waterway.
Trump was speaking with reporters in Florida on Monday, when he was asked about the global energy choke point, which has been disrupted amid back-and-forth attacks between Iran and Israel and the United States.
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At about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is between Iran and Oman and carries roughly 20 million barrels a day and about one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas, making it a top-value target when conflict in the region erupts.
“We’re really helping China here and other countries because they get a lot of their energy from the Straits,” Trump said. “We have a good relationship with China. It’s my honor to do it.”
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Trump is slated to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month. While touting the United States’ new energy partnership with Venezuela, Trump noted that China gets its oil through the strait.
“I mean, we’re doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China,” he said. “They get a lot of their oil through the straits.”
“We have a very good relationship with President XI (Jinping) and China,” he added. “I’m going there in a short period of time, and we’re protecting the world from what these lunatics are trying to do, and very successfully I might add.”
The U.S. will also waive all oil-related sanctions on some countries in an effort to reduce energy prices amid the conflict in the Middle East, Trump said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took to Iranian State TV vowing it would “not allow [the] export of a single liter of oil.”
Later, Trump reaffirmed his position on the strait in a fiery Truth Social post.
“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far. Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!,” he wrote.
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“This is a gift from the United States of America to China, and all of those Nations that heavily use the Hormuz Strait. Hopefully, it is a gesture that will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
5 Iranian women’s soccer players receive asylum in Australia after Trump pressure
Australia granted asylum to five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team on Monday, following their perceived political stand during the Women’s Asian Cup and pressure from President Donald Trump.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke made the announcement. The women were transported from their hotel in Gold Coast, Australia “to a safe location” by federal police officers in the country in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
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The players, then, met with Burke and began the processing for their humanitarian visas, he said.
“I say to the other members of the team the same opportunity is there,” Burke said. “Australia has taken the Iranian women’s soccer team into our hearts.”
The asylum bids came amid increased pressure from Trump on Monday and Iranian groups in Australia.
“Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“I just spoke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of Australia, concerning the Iranian National Women’s Soccer Team,” Trump added later. He’s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way. Some, however, feel they must go back because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don’t return. In any event, the Prime Minister is doing a very good job having to do with this rather delicate situation. God bless Australia!”
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The team arrived in Australia before Israel and the U.S. launched a joint offensive against Iran on Feb. 28. The strikes led to the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iranian players refused to sing their national anthem before an opening loss to South Korea last Monday, which was viewed by some as an act of resistance, which was dubbed by an Iranian commentator as the “pinnacle of dishonor.”
The team didn’t clarify. But the players sang the anthem and saluted before their losses to Australia and the Philippines.
“These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realize they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making,” Burke said. “The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.”
The Australian Iranian Council launched an online petition urging Australian authorities to “ensure that no member of Iran’s women’s national football team is to depart Australia while credible fears for their safety remain.”
“Where credible evidence exists that visiting athletes may face persecution, imprisonment, coercion, or worse upon return, silence is not a neutral position,” the petition read. “The current wartime environment has intensified repression, fear, and the risks faced by anyone publicly perceived by the Islamic Republic as disloyal.”
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Iran head coach Marziyeh Jafari was quoted as saying on Australia’s national news agency that the team wants “to come back to Iran as soon as we can.”
Whoopi Goldberg erupts over Trump’s Iran strategy, claims he’s ‘sending people in to lose their lives’
Whoopi Goldberg and her fellow co-hosts of “The View” blasted President Donald Trump’s military actions in Iran, warning on Monday that they believe it will be a disaster for Americans at home and abroad.
“Basically, we are sending people in to lose their lives,” Goldberg warned. “Because we have seen how fighting goes. We knew we shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan. We knew that, and they decided to do it anyway. So now we are in the same position where someone who doesn’t seem to care that human beings are being sent to war and people’s sons and daughters. His kids aren’t going.”
“So I don’t want anybody’s son and daughter to go,” she continued. “I don’t want anybody to go because this is not what we should be doing.”
Goldberg then appeared to rhetorically address Trump, saying, “And you said you weren’t going to do this.”
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“I think one of the things that’s really troubling me is how flippant, nonchalant, cavalier Trump has gotten about war, military operations, regime change,” said co-host Ana Navarro. “He’s turned into the Oprah Winfrey of regime change. ’You get regime change, and you get regime change, and you get regime change!’”
She shared how concerned she is about Trump comparing his actions in Iran to Venezuela, warning that these are not at all comparable scenarios.
“Venezuela is a country that did not have missiles, did not have drones, did not have the military capability of fighting back and making it a war,” she said. “Venezuela was ‘grab Maduro, one and done.’”
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Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed, noting that Trump had run on the message of “America first,” and that people voted for him because they wanted him to fix problems Americans have at home rather than get involved in distant conflicts.
“He ran on fixing this country, and I think people have been duped,” she said. “I think people are disappointed. And it’s really easy to start a war. We’ve seen that. It’s really difficult to end a war.”
She worried further that Trump “said on the airplane maybe we will have boots on the ground. Our military, we are the biggest, the best-trained military in the world, but you’re going to be fighting in Iran’s backyard. That is guerrilla fighting. That is a street fight. Our soldiers, many of them, will not come home.”
Navarro reiterated her point that Iran is not Venezuela, arguing that while Maduro’s Venezuela was a kleptocracy, Iran is a theocracy that will be bringing in a new, religiously motivated leader to rally the people against any invasion.
The Trump administration’s actions in Iran have been met with mixed reviews, even among some of the president’s supporters.
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White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told Fox News Digital, “Whoopi Goldberg and Ana Navarro are a pair of useful idiots that have no talent and a very poorly rated TV show. President Trump is courageously protecting the United States from the deadly threat posed by the rogue Iranian regime — and that is as America First as it gets.”
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“Under the evil hand of the Ayatollah, this terrorist regime has killed and maimed thousands of Americans for nearly 50 years — but, with Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is putting America first, eliminating the threat to our people, and securing our Nation and world for generations to come,” the statement added.
Iranian Kurdish fighters say they’re ready to strike Tehran, waiting for opening
EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Kurdish opposition groups say they are prepared to challenge Tehran but are holding back for now as the war between the United States, Israel and the Islamic Republic continues to unfold.
Khalid Azizi, spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that Kurdish forces are closely watching developments but have no plans to launch a ground offensive at this stage.
Reports in recent days have suggested that President Donald Trump spoke with Mustafa Hijri, the leader of KDPI, as Washington explores possible Kurdish involvement in pressure on Iran.
Azizi declined to confirm or deny whether such a conversation took place.
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Azizi himself has firsthand experience with Iran’s military retaliation.
In 2018, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at the KDPI headquarters in Koy Sanjaq in Iraq’s Kurdistan region during a leadership meeting, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens.
“We have been targeted by the Islamic Republic,” Azizi said. “The first Iranian missile was sent to my headquarters and I was personally injured in that attack.”
Despite the risks, Azizi said Kurdish resistance remains strong after decades of confrontation with Iran.
“The Iranian Kurdish resistance movement is actually very strong because we have been on the ground since the Iranian revolution,” he said.
Azizi spoke from Washington, D.C., where he said Kurdish representatives were meeting with policymakers and institutions to discuss the situation in Iran and the role Kurdish groups could play if the conflict evolves.
But for now, Kurdish groups say they are waiting to see how the broader war develops.
“We are ready and our party is well organized,” Azizi said. “But right now we do not have any intention to enter Iranian Kurdistan because the ground forces in this war have not been a topic.”
“It’s very easy to start a war,” he added. “But it will be more complicated how to end this war.”
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The KDPI is one of the oldest Kurdish opposition movements fighting Iran’s Islamic Republic. The group is a member of the Socialist International and operates primarily from bases in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and has been in armed and political opposition to Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Azizi said Kurdish political movements have recently taken a significant step by forming a joint alliance aimed at coordinating their political strategy.
“We have managed to create a unity among the Kurdish political parties,” he said. “This has been welcomed by the Iranian Kurdish people and by different Iranian political parties.”
The alliance, known as the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan, brings together several historically divided Kurdish factions that oppose the Islamic Republic.
Azizi said the future of Iran will ultimately depend on whether Iranians themselves rise up against the regime.
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“If you look at the goal of the United States and Israel in this war, they have been targeting the Iranian military, security and political institutions. In this aspect Iran has been weakened,” he said.
“But the regime still remains in power because people are not on the streets and there is no alternative right now to replace this regime.”
Azizi urged Western governments to focus not only on the military campaign but also on helping Iranian opposition movements coordinate politically.
Iran, he said, is a multi-ethnic country whose future stability will depend on building a democratic system that includes all of its communities.
“The path and the roadmap for rebuilding Iran must be based on the participation of all ethnic groups,” Azizi said. “Iran is a multi-ethnic society.”
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For now, he said, Kurdish fighters remain in a holding pattern.
“We have the ability and we have the capacity,” Azizi said. “But it is not easy right now for us to make any decision regarding entering Iranian Kurdistan.”
Hegseth once warned against endless wars. Now he’s leading Trump’s strike-first doctrine
In a little over a year, the United States has carried out dozens of airstrikes on vessels in the Caribbean tied to alleged narco-trafficking networks, launched sustained operations against Houthi forces in the Red Sea, captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, struck Iranian nuclear facilities and now embarked on an extended military campaign aimed at degrading Tehran’s missile, drone and command infrastructure.
The tempo marks one of the most assertive stretches of American force projection in recent years, spanning Latin America, the Middle East and critical maritime corridors.
For War Secretary Pete Hegseth, it also represents a striking turn.
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Just before the 2024 presidential election, he described himself as a “recovering neocon,” expressing regret over his support for Iraq-era interventionism and warning against open-ended wars.
Several analysts say the defining feature of the administration’s approach may be less about ideological evolution and more about alignment and execution.
“Unlike in Trump one, everyone in Trump’s cabinet now — Hegseth, Rubio, etc. — understands that the president is the boss,” said Matthew Kroenig, a defense strategist at the Atlantic Council. “In Trump 1.0 you had some Cabinet officials who thought their job was to save the Republic from Trump, the so-called adults in the room. And so I think it’s pretty clear the president wanted to go in this direction, and I think Hegseth sees himself as supporting the president’s vision.”
‘Validation of … leadership’
That cohesion has coincided with a pattern of risk-taking.
Several of the administration’s most consequential military moves, from Venezuela to the Houthis to the current Iran campaign, carried the potential for escalation.
Some strategists say the relative absence of early blowback from those interventions may have reinforced the administration’s willingness to escalate into the Iranian theater.
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“I’m not sure I would have advised this,” Kroenig said of the Iran operation. “It is pretty risky, but it’s going well so far.”
Iranian missile launches have declined in volume. Regional allies have not broken ranks.
Whether that constitutes strategic success, however, depends on the metric.
Justin Fulcher, a former Pentagon adviser to Hegseth, argued the early phases of the campaign reflect what he described as a “return to strategic clarity.”
“Deterrence is only credible when our allies actually believe that if President Trump says something, we will back it up,” Fulcher said. “This is a validation of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump’s leadership.”
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Hegseth, a former Army officer who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has argued that the current campaign bears little resemblance to those conflicts.
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both,” Hegseth said at a press conference in early March. “Our generation knows better and so does this president.”
In a separate interview, he added, “This is not a remaking of Iranian society from an American perspective. We tried that. The American people have rejected that.”
Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the campaign has unfolded largely as expected.
“I think things have gone reasonably well,” Pletka said, pointing to degraded air defenses and what she described as repeated miscalculations by Iran. “All they’ve really done is made everybody quite mad, and that was a really bad calculation on their part.”
At the same time, she cautioned against interpreting the administration’s actions as part of a fixed doctrine.
“I don’t think that it is doctrinal,” Pletka said. “I think this is ad hoc.”
Some longtime Trump supporters have said the current conflict is not what they expected from Trump, who campaigned on ending wars and “America First.”
“It feels like the worst betrayal this time because it comes from the very man and the admin who we all believed was different and said no more,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X. “Instead, we get a war with Iran on behalf of Israel that will succeed in regime in Iran. Another foreign war for foreign people for foreign regime change. For what?”
In Pletka’s view, the president has shown a pattern of attempting diplomacy first and shifting to force only when he concludes negotiations are unserious. She argues that posture distinguishes the current moment from past interventions.
She also emphasized that much of the operational credit belongs to the professional military.
“The planning behind this is credit to the U.S. military and to the CENTCOM commander and to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” she said.
‘Success and precision’
That distinction complicates efforts to attribute the current posture solely to Hegseth’s personal worldview. While the defense secretary has become a public face of the administration’s deterrence messaging, the execution of high-tempo campaigns rests heavily with career military leadership.
Some critics argue the administration has yet to clearly articulate an end state for the Iran campaign.
“Pete Hegseth needs to check with his boss on what the objective is,” former national security advisor John Bolton recently said on CNN. “How does Hegseth explain that we’ve already changed the regime, which wasn’t our objective? I think the Pentagon top leadership, civilian top leadership, needs some attitude adjustment. I think the military’s doing fine, but I wonder about the civilian leadership.”
The White House pushed back forcefully on criticism of the campaign.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said Monday that Hegseth “is doing an incredible job leading the Department of War,” pointing to what she described as the “ongoing success of Operation Epic Fury” and other missions.
Kelly said Iranian retaliatory attacks “have declined by 90 percent because the Department of War is destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities,” and added that Hegseth works “in lockstep with President Trump every day” to ensure the U.S. military “continues to be the greatest, most powerful fighting force in the world.”
The Pentagon echoed that assessment.
“Operation Epic Fury continues to advance with overwhelming success and precision,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said, describing a “resolute, full-spectrum campaign” aimed at the “total dismantlement of Iran’s terrorist network or its unconditional surrender.”
Others see the moment in broader historical terms.
Peter Doran, a foreign policy analyst, described the campaign as a potential attempt to “end a 47-year war” waged by the Islamic Republic against the United States, but on Washington’s terms.
“This is a clear effort to end a 47-year war that Iran has been waging against the United States,” Doran said.
He argued that visible American military performance could reverberate beyond the Middle East, particularly in Beijing.
“They look good,” Doran said of U.S. forces. “That will serve, I hope, as a disincentive for adventurism.”
If the operation ultimately succeeds in significantly degrading Iran’s military infrastructure, Doran argued, it could reshape the Middle East and expand diplomatic opportunities such as broader Arab-Israeli normalization.
“It changes everything in the Middle East,” he said.
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Yet even supporters acknowledge that long-term effects remain uncertain. In Venezuela, Maduro’s removal marked a dramatic shift in U.S. policy, but the governing apparatus he built remains largely intact.
Degrading missile stockpiles and drone infrastructure in Iran may buy time, but whether it produces durable deterrence or simply postpones reconstitution remains to be seen.
For now, the administration’s willingness to take calculated risks and its ability to avoid immediate escalation have reinforced the perception of restored American assertiveness. Whether that assertiveness translates into lasting strategic gains will likely define Hegseth’s tenure far more than the rhetoric that preceded it.