The Trump administration fired its top naval official on Wednesday in a move unrelated to the ongoing naval blockade of Iran’s strait of Hormuz, but instead over over an internal dispute about shipbuilding.
The Pentagon confirmed that John Phelan, who ran a private investment fund in Florida and was a Donald Trump donor, had been ousted as the navy secretary. His departure – the first of any service secretary in the Trump administration – came in the same week that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two container ships in the strait of Hormuz, claiming maritime violations and transferring them to Iranian shores.
