Less than a day after United States Central Command declared that “Project Freedom” — the operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping — had “just begun,” President Trump announced he was pausing it “for a short period of time”. The reversal came as the United Arab Emirates intercepted Iranian missiles and drones for a second consecutive day, and as the president publicly accused Pope Leo of “endangering a lot of Catholics” over the pontiff’s call for restraint on Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is travelling to the Vatican this week, was left to defend the remarks while insisting the United States is “very fortunate” — an odd line, given that gas at home is near $4.50.
The received wisdom
The mainstream reading, on cable and in the European chanceries, is that this is Trump being Trump: an erratic commander-in-chief who launched an operation he could not finish, picked a fight with the most popular religious leader on earth, and then reached for the off-ramp once allies started taking missile fire. On this view the pause is a tacit admission that the Pentagon overreached, that Iran has demonstrated escalation dominance in its own backyard, and that the administration’s only remaining play is to spin a retreat as a humanitarian gesture. The Pope’s reported call for restraint is folded into the same story — a senior moral authority acting as a brake on a president who insists the other side ought to “wave the white flag.” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s insistence that the United States “hasn’t capitulated on anything” reads, in this telling, as the protest of a wounded animal.
A different read
There is a less flattering interpretation of the same facts that nevertheless gives the administration more credit than its critics will. Pausing a stalled operation while you reposition assets, recalibrate rules of engagement, and let the Emiratis catch their breath is not, in itself, capitulation. It is what Eisenhower did at the Yalu in late 1952 when he decided the only stable end-state in Korea was a managed armistice rather than a march to the river. It is what Reagan did, less tidily, after the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983 — pulling Marines out of a mission whose objectives had quietly drifted past anything Congress had endorsed. The deeper question raised by Trump’s pause is not whether the United States should be opening the Strait of Hormuz with frigates and minesweepers — it almost certainly should — but whether the operation as designed had any chance of producing a durable result given that Iran can strike Fujairah at will and the UAE’s air defences are taking second-day attrition.
The papal row is harder to defend on tone, easier to defend on substance. Pope Leo, like John Paul II during the 1990–91 Gulf War, is performing the office that the Catholic Church has occupied since the Augustinian De Civitate Dei: the moral conscience of the West speaking against war even when the West’s wars are arguably just. The president’s response — that the Pope is “endangering Catholics” — is crude, but it points to something true. The pontiff’s call for restraint comes as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to commerce, pushing global energy markets into territory not seen since 1979 and forcing American drivers to absorb costs that fall hardest on people who do not live in cities serviced by metro rail. A Pope who urges the world’s strongest military to stand down, while ordinary Christians from Lagos to Lebanon to Manila watch their currencies and supply chains buckle under a price shock, is making a moral choice — not refusing to make one. Rubio’s defence of the president on his way to Rome acknowledges, in oblique diplomatic prose, that the Vatican’s position carries real costs in addition to its real moral weight.
The historic parallel that should be sobering is 1956. Eisenhower humiliated Britain and France over Suez precisely because he believed an open canal mattered more than allied vanity, and was willing to bear the political cost of saying so. The current administration finds itself in the awkward position of being unable to do the equivalent at Hormuz — and unable, too, to admit that limitation in the language of strategy. Hence the bluster about white flags and the lashing out at Leo. The pause may yet prove a sound tactical decision; the rhetoric around it is what tells you a great power is over-leveraged.
What to watch
Three signals will tell us whether this is a genuine reset or a public-relations holding pattern. First, watch where US carrier groups reposition over the next ten days: a return to Diego Garcia would suggest the pause is real, while a forward redeployment to Bahrain would suggest something else. Second, watch the UAE’s posture toward OPEC — a second day of absorbed attacks plus a damaged American security guarantee may yet push Abu Dhabi out of the cartel altogether. Third, watch what comes out of Rubio’s Vatican meeting: a joint statement on humanitarian corridors would be a soft win for the Pope, silence a hard one for the White House.
— J