Project Freedom lasted less than 48 hours. Trump announced it on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon — a plan to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz under U.S. military protection — and by Tuesday he had suspended it, citing “great progress” in Pakistani-mediated negotiations with Iran. The diplomatic cover was thin. The operational reality was simpler: Saudi Arabia pulled the plug.

According to two U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News, Riyadh informed Washington that U.S. aircraft would not be permitted to operate from Prince Sultan Air Base southeast of Riyadh, nor fly through Saudi airspace to support the escort mission. Kuwait followed. With those two pieces of geography removed, the defensive air umbrella that Project Freedom required to function could not be constructed. Fighter jets, refueling tankers, and support aircraft all depend on ABO — access, basing, and overflight — from regional partners. In this part of the world, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are the critical basing nodes, Kuwait the critical overflight corridor, Oman essential for both overflight and naval logistics. The operation needed all of them. It got none.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya emergency command has issued another threat, this time in direct response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of Operation Project Freedom — a mission to assist ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz. The command’s statement was unambiguous: all passage and navigation through the strait will be coordinated with Iranian forces, and any foreign armed force, particularly the American military, will be attacked if it approaches or enters the waterway.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the war began on February 28. Iran sealed it — intermittently at first, then completely — as its primary lever of economic coercion, blocking a waterway through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil normally passes. The result: stranded vessels, approximately 20,000 seafarers trapped aboard ships with nowhere to go, and gasoline prices in the United States approaching $4.44 per gallon, up nearly 50 percent since the conflict began.