Donald Trump vowed to dramatically escalate his war on Iran after negotiations for a lasting peace with the Islamic Republic ground to a halt.
“The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” the president posted to Truth Social early Thursday morning.
“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” he added.
The threat caps a stark reversal for the 79-year-old president, who spent the start of the week insisting a settlement was nearly in hand before ordering a second straight night of bombing against the regime. Kharg Island, the small Persian Gulf outpost he now wants to seize, handles close to 90 percent of Iranian crude exports.
The current flare-up began Sunday after Israel launched strikes against Iranian-aligned targets in neighboring Lebanon. Iran responded with attacks against Israel, to which Israel responded with direct attacks against Iran.
Trump claimed to be calling “all the shots” on Monday even as the situation continued to unravel. He said he would speak with Benjamin Netanyahu to end the tit-for-tat cycle of strikes, only for the Israeli prime minister to squeeze in an extra salvo at Iran before the sides eventually called it quits.
Any reprieve there was temporary. Iran downed a U.S. Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping corridor through which up to a fifth of global oil exports pass, to which the Pentagon responded by raining down a series of strikes on Iranian targets, prompting Iran to launch retaliatory strikes against U.S. military assets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
American forces have meanwhile choked off shipping along Iran’s coastline, firing at two tankers as they attempted to traverse the Strait, which Iran has now declared closed. Iranian officials, for their part, appear to have been left completely at a loss as to the current status of, and U.S. commitment to, any peace talks after the recent escalations.
A spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry bemoaned in comments to the BBC on Wednesday that the U.S. is “damaging this diplomatic process through the contradictory messages it sends, its repeated shifts in positions and demands, and, worst of all, through repeated violations of the ceasefire.”
This is a developing story and will be updated...
