President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he was temporarily pausing “Project Freedom,” the three-day-old operation aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, at the request of Pakistan and due to progress in negotiations — hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio heralded the start of the operation. 

The president wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday evening that all elements of Project Freedom, a U.S. mission to escort commercial vessels safely through the Strait of Hormuz, “will be paused for a short period of time” in order to see if a “[peace] agreement can be finalized and signed.” 

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, however, “will remain in full force and effect,” Trump noted.

The president said that the decision had been made “based on the request of Pakistan and other countries” as well as due to the “great progress” made toward “a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran.”

The comments came a few hours after Rubio held a lengthy press conference at the White House, where he repeatedly insisted that the U.S. had completed Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s name for the war in Iran, and was now solely focused on Project Freedom, as well as diplomatic efforts.

“Operation Epic Fury has concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. We’re not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What the president would prefer is a deal,” Rubio said. “He would prefer to sit down and work out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches on all the key topics that have to be addressed. That’s the route he prefers.” 

“That is, so far, not the route that Iran has chosen,” he continued. “And so the result has been that the United States has to do something about the fact that we’re the only nation on earth that can do anything to open up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there, and that’s what we’re undergoing now,” Rubio said of launching Project Freedom.

The nation’s top diplomat emphasized on multiple occasions that any future U.S. attacks on Iran should be viewed with a different lens than prior instances of fighting. 

“What’s really important for you to report and for everyone to understand is this is not an offensive operation — this is a defensive operation. What that means is very simple: There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first,” Rubio said. 

He also acknowledged that any peace agreement with Iran would need to address its nuclear enrichment, and allow for the U.S. or others to remove any enriched material currently in Iranian facilities buried in the U.S. and Israeli strikes in June of last year.

“As far as the negotiation is concerned, I think the president’s been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that’s very deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to figure it out,” he added. “That has to be addressed, and that’s being addressed in the negotiation.”

The secretary of state could not say if the president had followed through on his public musings to send weapons to Kurdish groups and Iranians looking to take up arms against the regime, but again tried to create distance between any prior offers and Project Freedom.

“I think what the president is expressing is the desire that he wishes the Iranian people had an ability to fight back against some of these things that are happening to them,” Rubio said. “And I would view that as distinct and separate from the specifics of this operation that was ongoing before it concluded, and certainly different from the operation that’s going on now.”