Employing his usual bravado and braggadocio, President Donald Trump told Americans last night that if Iran does not capitulate to the United States he will continue the air raids that have not only destroyed much of the nation’s military capability, but also killed untold numbers of civilians, including schoolgirls.
Trump again employed the language of World War II General Curtis LeMay. The U.S. he said, will bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”
He also claimed that although the campaign on behalf of Israel has achieved most of its objectives, we will continue to shellac Iran for at least the next two weeks.
While Trump bragged that the United States has more oil reserves than other nations, oil prices surged and the stock market dropped after the speech.
“Overwhelming Victories”
Trump repeatedly used the word “victory” or “victories” during the oration, suggesting that Iran is on its knees militarily.
“In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield,” Trump said:
Victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran’s navy is gone. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them … are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak. Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed. And their weapons, factories and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces. Very few of them left.
Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning, and now winning bigger than ever before.
After reviewing Iran’s perfidy for the past 47 years, including its proxy bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen and its involvement in the attack of the USS Cole, Trump said the country could not be permitted to have nuclear weapons.
“The most violent and thuggish regime on earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield,” he said:
I will never let that happen, and neither should any of our past presidents.
This situation has been going on for 47 years, and should have been handled long before I arrived in office. I did many things during my two terms in office to stop the quest for nuclear weapons by Iran. First, and perhaps most importantly, I killed General Qassem Soleimani in my first term. He was an evil genius, brilliant person, a horrible human being, however, the father of the roadside bomb. And he lived … just horrible what he did. Iran would have been perhaps in a far better, stronger position had he lived. We would have had probably a different conversation tonight. But you know what? We’d still be winning and winning big.
Trump denounced President Barack Hussein Obama for shipping cash to Iran. He claimed he did what other presidents wouldn’t do, and is “correcting” their mistakes.
First came Operation Midnight Hammer, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites in June, which “totally obliterated” those sites but did not go far enough. “The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Trump said.
Thus came Operation Epic Fury, he said, listing U.S. objectives:
We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders. That means eliminating Iran’s navy, which is now absolutely destroyed; hurting their air force and their missile program at levels never seen before; and annihilating their defense industrial base. We’ve done all of it. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their missiles are just about used up or beaten. Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran[’s] military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies, and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
Hormuz Will Open “Naturally”
Trump claimed Americans now enjoy the “strongest economy in history,” and that “because of our ‘drill baby drill’ program, America has plenty of gas.”
“We have so much gas,” Trump said:
Under my leadership, we are [the] No. 1 producer of oil and gas on the planet, without even discussing the millions of barrels that we’re getting from Venezuela. Because of the Trump administration’s policies, we produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. … The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it, and we don’t need it. We’ve beaten and completely decimated Iran. They are decimated both militarily and economically, and [in] every other way.
Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz “will open up naturally” after the “conflict” because Iran will “want to be able to sell oil because that’s all they have to try and rebuild.”
But then he returned to the war, outlining what was coming for Iran: a war against its civilian population and energy and other infrastructure.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” he said:
We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal; we never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that’s the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone.
How long it might take to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong” is unclear. But the war’s opening salvo included sending a Tomahawk cruise missile into a girls’ school. Total dead: 165 civilians.
Trump outlined the 20th century’s unspeakable wars, and noted the U.S. has been bombing Iran for just 32 days.
“The country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat,” he said:
They were the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no longer.
Despite all the oil that Trump claimed is available to Americans, the saber-rattling address sent oil prices soaring from 7 to 11 percent, and the stock market into a nosedive of 216 points as of this afternoon.
As of today, for the first time in four years, the nationwide average price of regular gasoline had surpassed $4 per gallon. Just before the invasion in late February, the price was $2.98.
But Americans, as Trump said, are “winning, and now winning bigger than ever before.”
