Saudi
officials were angered by President Donald Trump’s surprise
announcement that the U.S. would start guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz, fearing the move could spur more Iranian attacks on Gulf allies and reignite the conflict, two U.S. officials said.
NBC News reported this week that Washington launched the operation without notifying key Gulf allies first.
In
response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it 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, the officials said.
Trump paused the operation 36 hours after it was started, and the airspace was reopened.
Project Freedom was
the Trump administration’s effort to get traffic moving through the
strait that has been blocked by Iran since the U.S. and Israel-led war
began. The operation came after a ceasefire was declared April 8 to
broker a peace deal. The U.S. and Iran are negotiating.
Unlike
some other countries in the region, Saudi Arabia can still move oil
without ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Their East-West pipeline,
which runs 750 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, bypasses the
strait and can export millions of gallons of oil every day. The
pipeline better positions the Saudis if the strait remains closed or too
dangerous to transit because they can still move their oil out of the
region.
“The Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia continues to stand in support of de-escalation and avoiding
escalation, as well as negotiations and the efforts undertaken regarding
them,” Ambassador Dr. Rayed Krimly, the Saudi deputy minister for
public diplomacy, posted on X.
A
Middle East official said the Kingdom preferred diplomacy, but reserves
the right to self-defense and supports Gulf allies’ right to
self-defense.
“The way
Project Freedom was to be executed was risky and could have triggered
escalation,” the official said. Gulf allies could have suffered
“catastrophic” strikes, the official said. “All was resolved though
within hours and was less dramatic than it sounds,” the official said.
The
official said these issues would have been handled previously with a
few phone calls, “but given the world we live in today the rush to put
things out on social media puts things on high focus,” the official
said.
The White House will
not say whether or when Project Freedom will resume, and the president
reserves all options available to him, according to a senior White House
official. The White House continues to dispute that there were ever
restrictions placed on the U.S. related to the operation.
“The focus is on getting a deal done,” according to the senior Trump administration official.
One of the officials said the operation would not resume anytime soon because the Gulf allies’ concerns remained.
When
the Saudis and other Gulf allies spoke with both Trump administration
and U.S. military officials to express their concerns that the operation
might be too risky, and to ask how the U.S. would respond to Iranian
aggression over the operation, the U.S. made clear that a peace deal was
the primary focus and the U.S. would likely not respond to Iranian
strikes on infrastructure in the region, the U.S. officials said.
The
president announced the operation Sunday in a social media post, and
his top national security advisers spent the next 36 hours talking up
the effort to help commercial vessels through the strait, only for Trump
to abruptly call it off.
The
U.S. military had been lining up a number of additional ships in the
Gulf for transit through the strait when the operation was stopped, a
third U.S. official said. U.S. Central Command had earlier announced
that two U.S.-flagged ships had made it through the strait as part of the operation.
Kuwait
also said it would revoke U.S. military use of its bases and airspace
to support Project Freedom until Trump reversed course, according to the
two officials. The Kuwaiti embassy didn’t immediately return a message
seeking comment.
The U.S.
military refers to permission to use another country’s territory as ABO,
which stands for access, basing and overflight. Fighter jets, refueling
tankers and support aircraft all need permission to fly from key
regional allies. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are critical for allowing
aircraft to base there, Kuwait is critical for overflight, and Oman for
both overflight and naval logistics.
The White House has previously said that “regional allies were notified in advance.”
