According to NBC News, President Trump’s abrupt reversal on Project Freedom, a plan to help commercial ships go through the Strait of Hormuz, was because Saudi Arabia blocked access to its airspace and military bases.

The outlet reports that the announcement of the operation angered leadership in Saudi Arabia, and in response, they would not “allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort.”

NBC News explained further:

A call between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not resolve the issue, the two U.S. officials said, forcing the president to pause Project Freedom in order to restore U.S. military access to the critical airspace.

Other close Gulf allies were also caught off guard; the president spoke with leaders in Qatar after the effort had already begun.

A Saudi source told NBC News that Trump and the crown prince “have been in touch regularly.” Saudi officials were also in touch with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Central Command and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the source added.

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Asked whether the announcement of Project Freedom caught the Saudi leaders by surprise, the Saudi source said: “The problem with that premise is that things are happening quickly in real time.” The source said Saudi Arabia was “very supportive of the diplomatic efforts” by Pakistan to broker a deal between Iran and the U.S. to end the war.

A White House official said in a statement when asked about some Gulf state leaders being caught off guard by the announcement of the U.S. effort to help ships transit the Strait of Hormuz, “Regional allies were notified in advance.”

“Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries, the tremendous Military Success that we have had during the Campaign against the Country of Iran and, additionally, the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran, we have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom (The Movement of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed,” Trump said on Tuesday.

“Having spoken to a senior Saudi official about the NBC article regarding Project Freedom, I honestly think the article completely misunderstood what actually happened because it was written almost entirely from a US perspective rather than from a GCC perspective. First of all, contrary to the impression being created, the GCC were NOT blindsided by Project Freedom,” said author and former MI6 spy inside al-Qaeda Aimen Dean.

“They knew about it beforehand. Roughly half a day before. The airspace was opened. The facilities were available. Nobody objected. There was broad support for the idea because, at least publicly, Project Freedom was supposed to be a limited humanitarian-security operation aimed at relieving the 22,000 sailors trapped around Hormuz and allowing shipping lanes to breathe again. Nobody in the GCC had a problem with that,” he continued.

Cont. from Dean:

But here is the issue .. and this is the part the NBC article completely misses.
If you are asking GCC countries to participate in such an operation, then you need to be upfront about the rules of engagement from day one!

You cannot say:
“Please open your skies and bases, expose your energy infrastructure”
…only for everyone to discover afterwards that the actual American policy was apparently:

“Oh by the way, if Iran attacks you with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones in several waves, we still won’t retaliate because Donald Trump is busy chasing The Deal.”

And this is exactly what shocked the Saudis. Not the Iranian attack itself.

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The UAE/GCC expected retaliation.. This is Iran. Nobody in the Gulf is naïve about that anymore.
The shock came from the American reaction afterwards.

You had attacks against Emirati infrastructure. Fujairah was targeted. Multiple waves involving drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles.

And Washington’s response was basically:
“Meh. Minor incident. Let’s not escalate.”
Minor incident?!

For the GCC that was madness.

Because what Riyadh, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi suddenly realized was that Trump’s obsession with preserving “The Deal” had apparently reached the point where Gulf energy infrastructure was now considered acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of his precious negotiations.

Everything became:
The deal.
The deal.
The beautiful deal.
The greatest deal.
The mother of all deals.
The ultimate “Art of the deal”
Or perhaps, more accurately:
The ultimate fart of the deal.

Because from the Gulf perspective, this stopped looking like strategy and started looking like desperate political vanity mixed with deadly wishful thinking.

Had the GCC been told beforehand:
“Listen, whatever Iran does to you during Project Freedom, America will not retaliate because we do not want to endanger negotiations…”
…they would have almost certainly refused participation from the start.

The problem was not Project Freedom itself.

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The problem was discovering midway through the operation that the GCC countries were apparently expected to sit there quietly as punching bags while Washington played negotiation theatrics with Tehran. So the Saudis and Kuwaitis pulled plug!

Because the GCC know something US usually forgets:

Iran plays the long game.
You can freeze enrichment.
Pause enrichment.
Delay enrichment.
Sign ten agreements.
Twenty agreements.
Forty agreements.

But if the infrastructure remains…
If the centrifuges remain…
If the IRGC remains…
If the proxy network remains…

then eventually the game resumes.

There will be another distraction.
Another pandemic.
Another financial crisis.
Another war somewhere else.
Another paralysis in Washington.
And while the world is distracted, enrichment quietly resumes again.

Ironically, much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile expanded during the pandemic years precisely because global attention was elsewhere.

Judging by the reaction to the UAE attacks, the Saudis and Kuwaitis concluded that Trump’s version of deterrence had become:

“Please absorb the missiles quietly because I’m trying to write the sequel to “The Fart of the Deal.”

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More from the New York Post:

A Gulf source familiar with the US-Iran negotiations previously told The Post that the “cease-fire is still intact, but its stability is limited and dependent on continued restraint from both sides.”

Iran has launched at least 10 attacks on US forces since the start of the April 8 cease-fire, in addition to strikes on Persian Gulf neighbors, according to Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Small skirmishes between American warships and Iranian boats still occurred Monday — with six small vessels from Tehran’s regime sunk.

“You know, they fired them in little boats with pea shooters. You know, peas shooters, little boats,” Trump said of the clash. “You know why? Because they don’t have any boats anymore. Their navy is comprised of, they call them, little boats.”

Just around 11 ships have transited the waterway in the past 24 hours, per hormuzstraitmonitor.com, down to less than 20% of pre-conflict levels.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also noted that nearly “23,000 civilians from 87 different countries” have been “trapped inside the Gulf, and left for dead in the Persian Gulf by this Iranian regime,” since the start of US-Israeli military strikes against Tehran on Feb. 28.

 

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