'It's an admission': New scramble said to be a confession of major Trump failure

By announcing a new naval operation to provide security for vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump had “effectively” admitted that his naval blockade of the critical shipping waterway was a failure, Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas argued on Monday.

“The push to re-open the Strait of Hormuz today, with two US warships crossing it and two US-flagged merchant vessels, signals the White House realizes it cannot keep waiting for the blockade to force Iran into the negotiation table,” Blas wrote in a social media post on X.

“Effectively, it's an admission the blockade isn't working (if the blockade is seen as a means to get Iranian concessions, rather than an end in itself). The timeline of what the blockade would do to the Iranian oil industry was completely wrong.”

The Strait of Hormuz – a critical shipping route through which a fifth of the world’s oil trade flows – has been partially closed since Feb. 28 after the Trump administration launched a coordinated attack on Iran alongside Israel. Iran’s denial of U.S.-aligned vessels to the strait prompted Trump to authorize a U.S. blockade of the strait in mid-April.

Seen by many as an attempt to increase pressure on Tehran to reach a peace deal with the United States, the blockade – now three weeks in – has yet to produce an agreement acceptable to the president.

On Sunday, Trump announced Project Freedom, a new naval operation designed to force transit through the strait, but in doing so, Blas argued, he had all but admitted his previous strategy of forcing Tehran to the table “isn’t working.”