Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied that the exchange of fire with Iran on Monday had broken the ongoing ceasefire, framing the clash as a “separate and distinct project” when a reporter grilled him on Tuesday.

According to U.S. Central Command, Iranian forces reacted Monday to President Donald Trump’s attempts to safeguard ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz by firing cruise missiles at U.S. Navy ships and deploying drones toward commercial vessels.

All threats were intercepted, and no U.S. or U.S.-flagged ships were hit. U.S. forces also destroyed six Iranian small boats during the altercation.

Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine held a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday when he was pressed on what the exchange meant for the tentative agreement in place.

“In the last 24 hours or so, Iran’s fired at us, we fired at Iran. Just going to ask you more directly, is the ceasefire over?” one reporter said.

Hegseth replied: “No, the ceasefire is not over.”

He continued: “Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct project, and we expected there would be some churn at the beginning, which happened. And we said we would defend and defend aggressively, and we absolutely have. Iran knows that. And ultimately, the president’s going to make a decision whether anything were to escalate into a violation of a ceasefire, but certainly we would urge Iran to be prudent in the actions that they take, to keep that underneath this threshold.”

He added: “This is about the [strait], this is about freedom of navigation, and about international waterways. This is about free flow of commerce, all the things that happened before, and only Iran is contesting. So right now the ceasefire certainly holds, but we’re going to be watching very, very closely.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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