Trump Offers No Timeline Or Path Forward In Meandering Iran War Address

In his first major speech about the war against Iran he began without consulting allies and without the consent of Congress, President Donald Trump offered no new timeline or plan for how the war will end and instead repeated recent talking points, including threats of war crimes and an assertion that the critical Strait of Hormuz would “naturally” open by itself soon.

In a rare prime-time address to the nation, Trump did not provide any hints as to how he might bring the tens of thousands of deployed service members home without leaving Iran in charge of the strait that normally sees a fifth of all the world’s oil pass through it.

Instead, he ran through the destruction he has already wreaked on Iran and how much worse he will make things for its citizens.

“If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants, very hard and probably simultaneously,” Trump said.

Destroying a country’s electrical infrastructure, critical to civilian life, is generally considered a violation of international law.

Rather than give Americans a better sense of when his war would end, Trump instead compared the month it has lasted so far to longer wars the nation has fought over the past century.

“It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days,” Trump said.

His war has already left 13 US service members dead and has injured several hundred.

In Iran, human rights monitors estimated that some 1,500 civilians have been killed already, including 175 people, mostly young girls, by a US missile strike on a school in the first hours of the attack on February 28.

The president, as he has countless times, yet again drew a fantasy portrait of the 2015 nuclear deal that had been negotiated by former President Barack Obama, which had limited how much nuclear material Iran could have and mandated an intrusive regime of inspections.

Trump withdrew from the agreement during his first term in office, which was followed by Iran resuming its production of higher-grade uranium.

“I terminated Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, a disaster. Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash. Green, green cash. Took it out of banks from Virginia, DD, then Maryland, all the cash they had, flew it by airplanes in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty. But it didn’t work,” Trump said — failing to mention that his war has permitted Iran to sell its own oil at much higher prices since it began, which has already netted the nation some 10 times as much money.

Trump’s announcement is the latest in a dizzying series of contradictory claims about the war since its start. Trump originally promised that the US Navy would escort tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. That never happened.

He claimed repeatedly that the war was over and that the United States had won, even as he continued ordering more air attacks. He claimed he was negotiating with Iran to end the war while also claiming he was killing everyone he might negotiate with.

And he claimed the war could not end unless Iran turned over its hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium, but then began his speech saying that the nuclear fuel is buried so deep underground that Iran could never get it — and that he could, in any event, simply monitor it via reconnaissance satellites.

Trump expanded on that idea, turning the original main reason for the war — Iran’s nuclear capability — into an afterthought that could be dealt with later if need be.

“It would take months to get near the nuclear dust, and we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we will hit them with missiles very hard again,” he said.

As to the spiking gasoline and diesel prices his war has brought to Americans and people around the world, which has caused his poll numbers to fall even further, Trump blamed that pain on Iran.

“The short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighbouring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict,” he said.

Trump previously said he had been surprised by Iran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbours to hurt the flow of oil, even though intelligence analysts have for decades anticipated that Iran would do exactly that if attacked.

In his speech, which at 18 minutes is among the shortest Trump has delivered as president, he told Americans that they should be grateful for what he has done: “This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future.”