In his first address to the nation on the Iran war, President Trump declared Wednesday night that the U.S. has already achieved many of its key objectives and will hit Iran hard in the coming days to finish the job, signaling the conflict will soon be over.
It’s been a month since Operation Epic Fury kicked off, and President Trump stepped up to the White House podium with a clear message: This war isn’t over yet.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two-to-three weeks,” the president insisted. “We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.”
He repeated his warning to Iran: Open up the Strait of Hormuz for oil and gas shipping, or face U.S. air strikes that could wipe out the country’s power plants.
Trump also called on America’s allies—especially those who rely on Iranian oil—to help keep the oil flowing through the Strait.
“Go to the Straight and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy.”
Across the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s neighbor, the United Arab Emirates, says it might join a coalition to help police this oil-rich region.
Oil and gas prices have skyrocketed since the war began. Brent crude reached a high of nearly $120 a barrel in early March. It’s now settled lower to around $100 a barrel.
Here at home, gas prices have climbed to over four dollars a gallon, the highest in four years.
“This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict,” Trump explained.
The president promises prices will drop once the fighting stops.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to the president’s speech, saying, “In a rambling, disjointed speech, an unhinged president failed to justify his disastrous decision to go to war with Iran.”
But ABC News military analyst Col. Steve Ganyard said the president didn’t tackle the biggest question on everyone’s mind.
“They talked about we’ve taken care of the Army, the Navy, we’ve taken care of the missile production, and we’ve taken care of, at least notionally, their ability to hit Israel in the United States,” explained Ganyard. “But the nuclear problem has got that quiet check mark, and it was not addressed.”
Trump still has to figure out how to secure and get rid of 460 kilograms of enriched uranium sitting in Iran.
Will it take a risky Special Forces mission? Are we talking boots on the ground? First, someone has to actually find it before anything else can happen.
The president might want to settle things at the negotiating table, but Iran’s foreign minister won’t publicly admit if they’re talking. And news reports say U.S. intelligence doesn’t believe Iran is serious about talks to end the war.
For now, Trump’s message Wednesday night was loud and clear: This war ends when he says so. Until then, the U.S. plans to hit Iran even harder in the days ahead.
