John Phelan, the Secretary of the Navy for the United States, quits as Iran's naval blockade goes on.

“Immediately” will leave the post US Secretary of Navy John Phelan, amid the clouds of uncertainty over the ongoing tensions with Iran, the Pentagon said Wednesday (local time). However, it didn’t explain the reasoning behind Phelan’s sudden departure.

“Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration effective immediately,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). “On behalf of the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of War, we thank Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy.”

“We wish him well in his future endeavors,” said Parnell, noting that Undersecretary Hung Cao will serve as Acting Secretary of the Navy.

Phelan left at a time when the Trump administration had already fired a lot of its top generals and officers, such as the heads of the US Navy and Coast Guard, the National Security Agency (NSA) chief, and the Air Force's vice chief of staff. This happened after the Republican leader was re-elected for a second term.

Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, has said that President Trump is picking leaders he wants, but the Democrats have called this a political use of the US military. The Financial Times said that civilian leaders at the Pentagon were against Phelan's shipbuilding plan and also against "nominations and promotions of military officers."

Another story from the Associated Press (AP) said that Phelan was seen as a "outsider being brought in to shake up the Navy." The report said that he was a big donor to Trump's campaign and that he had also started the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC.

Phelan's departure comes at a time when the US Navy is very busy because it is stationed in the Middle East because of the conflict with Iran. The US Navy has sent three aircraft carriers to the region so far, and Trump has said that all of the armed forces are ready to start fighting Iran again if the ceasefire ends.

In the meantime, the US Navy has kept a heavy presence in the Caribbean region since the US military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.

By the way, Cao ran an unsuccessful campaign for the US Senate in Virginia in 2024. His biography includes escaping Vietnam with his family as a child in the 1970s. In a campaign video for his Senate bid, the AP reports, he likened Vietnam’s Cold War communist regime to the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.