8 hours agoHegseth warns US forces will ‘shoot to destroy’ any Iranian ships laying mines in Strait of HormuzSecretary of War Pete Hegseth warned Friday that the U.S. military “will shoot to destroy” any Iranian ships that are laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. “President Trump has authorized the United States Navy to destroy any Iranian fast boats that attempt to put mines in the water or disrupt passage through the Strait of Hormuz, to shoot and kill,” Hegseth said. “Our commanders have clear rules of engagement. If Iran is putting mines in the water or otherwise threatening American commercial shipping or American forces, we will shoot to destroy. No hesitation. Just like the drug boats in the Caribbean.” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that transit is occurring in the Strait of Hormuz but it’s “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, fast boats, crafts, like I said, with weapons on them,” he said. “These are commercial ships. In some cases cruise ships, cruise ships that came through, being threatened by these.”Hegseth also said that Iran’s “battered” military, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been “reduced to a gang of pirates with a flag.” “They cloak their aggression in slogans, but the world now sees them for what they are — criminals on the high seas. They don’t control anything. They’re acting like pirates, acting like terrorists. They’re the ones who lay indiscriminate mines, who shoot at random ships, who killed 45,000 of their own people, innocent protesters, in the course of weeks, their own people. They are the bad actors,” Hegseth said. “The vessels that the Iranians seized in recent days, a couple of them, they’re not American ships, they’re not Israeli ships. They’re just random ships where they drove their little speedboats up to and shot at those ships with AK-47’s. Anyone with a speedboat, a gun and the wrong intentions can do that. They know that we, the United States of America, control the flow of global shipping, and we know that they know. Their real navy is at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf,” Hegseth added.
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