President Donald Trump threatened to destroy Iran a day after he threatened to attack Iran’s power plants tomorrow in a profanity-laced rant on Truth Social.
Yesterday’s deranged, undignified post contained an F-bomb and continued increasingly erratic and dangerous statements on the social media site. Today, during a news conference in which Trump and other top officials described the operation to rescue a downed F-15 aviator, the president said the “entire country” might be “taken out … tomorrow night.”
Last week, he threatened to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Ages.”
Press Conference
Trump, CIA chief John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to discuss the rescue of a downed aviator. Iran shot down the Strike Eagle, an air-to-air and air-to-ground fighter on Friday. U.S. forces quickly rescued the pilot during a risky daylight operation, but the weapons system officer landed a “significant distance away,” Trump said. Treating his own wounds, the aviator climbed to high ground and relayed his location to forces. Trump said 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, and 13 rescue aircraft participated in the rescue late Saturday.
Ratcliffe, Hegseth, and Caine described in some detail how U.S. forces pulled off the operation, and said no other military could do so. Trump and the officials said Americans never leave a man behind, and that this operation proved it.
But during his opening remarks, Trump interjected a line that suggests his plan to continue bombing Iran. Noting that Operation Epic Fury is succeeding “at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” he said that “the entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”
Hegseth likewise warned the country that its leaders had better “choose wisely.”
Easter Sunday Post
Those remarks seemed to confirm what the president wrote on the day the Prince of Peace rose from the dead.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social:
There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy b****rds, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.
Iran only closed the Strait of Hormuz when the U.S. and Israel began bombing.
Asked whether bombing power plants would punish Iranians for the failing of their regime, Trump said “intercepts” show that the people want the bombing campaign to continue.
The Iranians say “please keep bombing,” Trump said. “All I can tell you is they want freedom.”
Asked by a New York Times reporter whether he was concerned that bombing power plants would violate international law, Trump said “no, not at all.”
“I hope I don’t have to do it,” he continued, adding that Iran has been trouble for 47 years. “We’re never gonna let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” He also said the Times has “no credibility.”
Trump also extended by 24 hours the deadline for Iran to completely reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
On March 22, he warned Iran that it had 48 hours to reopen the strait or face even greater destruction. He extended that deadline to March 27. But on March 26, he told Iran it had until April 6 at 8:00 p.m, “as per Iranian Government request.”
Explaining why he wouldn’t hit Iran with a major air raid Monday, he said, “I thought it was inappropriate the day after Easter.”
Strangely though, Trump thought it appropriate on Easter to drop an F-bomb-laced threat to raze another country’s civilian infrastructure.
Trump: Bomb Them to the “Stone Ages”
Trump’s latest threats followed his speech to the nation last week, when he threatened to vaporize Iran with more bombing.
“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.”
Iran has apparently not been been bombed back to the Middle Ages, the Greco-Roman Era, or even the Iron or Bronze Ages. But regardless, U.S. forces, Trump said, have hit more than 13,000 targets with 10,000 strikes.
Those strikes are coming at a steep price.
At this writing and since the war began 37 days ago, the Iran War Cost Tracker reports, 13 American military personnel have been killed and 300 wounded. More than 5,000 Iranian military members have been killed, including the head of its Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, and, most recently, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s intelligence chief, Major General Majid Khademi.
More than 1,500 Iranian civilians are dead.
The war is costing Americans more than $1 billion daily, and has reached $42.9 billion as of this writing. Cost per hour: Almost $42 million.
The IRGC has vowed revenge for the Israeli air strike that killed Khademi, CBS News reported:
The malicious and desperate enemy should know that a major retaliatory strike by the IRGC Intelligence Organization, under Operation “Crushing Revenge,” awaits the planners and perpetrators of this crime.
