US has turned back 13 ships in blockade of Iran, Joint Chiefs chairman says

Since the United States began to blockade Iran’s ports on Tuesday, 13 ships have heeded warnings from U.S. warships to turn back, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday.

The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group is leading the blockade, Gen. Dan Caine said at a Pentagon press briefing with sailors prepared to board any commercial vessels that attempt to cross the blockade line.

In addition to ships, there is a “massive, massive force of fighters, intelligence aircraft, helicopters, and other embarked forces, to include aerial refueling tankers that are up overhead this blockade area,” Caine said, indicating a chart of U.S. presence in the region.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, joined the briefing to talk about two recent trips to the Middle East, where he said he “had the privilege of personally recognizing more than 100 servicemen and women for their extraordinary valor, their courage and their initiative under fire.”

Cooper also said he met with teams who had recovered downed Iranian one-way attack drones and rebuilt them.

“We brought them back to America, took the guts out, put a ‘made in America’ stamp on them, and fired them right back to Iran,” he said. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed Iran’s government directly in his remarks, asserting that Tehran can attempt to “dig out” of its destroyed military and defense industrial base facilities, “but you can’t reconstitute.”

Hegseth also challenged Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, saying they “don’t have a real navy or real domain awareness,” though Iran’s mines have effectively kept the waterway closed. 

Hegseth then turned his ire upon the press.

“I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling, despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on. It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”

He compared coverage of the Iran war to that of the Afghanistan withdrawal, accusing the media of bending “over backwards to explain away” the chaos of the American airlift out of Kabul’s airport as Taliban forces took over the country.

In reality, news organizations at the time asked the Pentagon in its daily briefings how and why the withdrawal effort had been left to the last minute and allowed to get so out of control. Pentagon officials deferred questions about planning and decision-making to the State Department.

Hegseth then turned his attention to recruiting efforts by the Air Force and Space Force, which announced Tuesday they had met their fiscal year 2026 goals five months ahead of deadline.

“Where are the reports on that? Where’s the coverage of the new spirit in the country? The new spirit in the ranks, the surge of Americans wanting to join the greatest military in the world,” he said. “Nothing from the fake news.”

In fact, ABC News reported on the story on Wednesday, becoming the latest of several news organizations to do so.