US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, speaking during a press conference on Friday, delivered a sharply worded warning to Tehran, accusing the Iranian regime of destabilising maritime security by behaving like “pirates” on the global stage. The remarks, later shared by the White House on its official handle on X, underscored rising tensions between the United States and Iran.
The Secretary claimed that a tightening blockade has effectively placed severe restrictions on Iran’s movements, asserting that “nothing in, nothing out” reflects growing American control over the situation in the West Asia region. He specifically targeted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), alleging that it has been weakened to the point of operating like a “gang of pirates with a flag.”
“To the regime in Tehran, the blockade is tightening by the hour. We are in control, nothing in, nothing out. Iran’s battered military, the IRGC specifically, 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,” Hegseth said.
He accused Iranian forces of engaging in indiscriminate attacks at sea, including laying mines and firing at commercial vessels without provocation. He emphasised that ships targeted in recent incidents were neither American nor Israeli, but random vessels.
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“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. The vessels that the Iranians seized in recent days, a couple of them, are not American ships. They’re not Israeli ships. They’re just random ships that they drove their little speedboats up to and shot at with AK-47s. Anyone with a speedboat, a gun, and the wrong intentions can do that,” the Secretary added.
The Secretary also levelled serious allegations against Iran, claiming that around 45,000 of its own citizens were killed during protests, portraying the regime as both externally aggressive and internally repressive.
Reinforcing US dominance, Hegseth stated that the United States controls the flow of global shipping and that the Iranian leadership is aware of it.
