In a 19-minute primetime address, President Donald Trump laid out his case for conducting military operations against Iran, casting it as an long overdue step to eliminate a nuclear threat, but he gave few specifics of the plan for ending the war.
As some commentators pointed out shortly after the speech, the president’s rhetoric even signaled an escalation, not an immediate pullback from the month-long conflict.
The president talked of coming to some sort of deal with what remained of the Iranian leadership, a group that he called “less radical and much more reasonable.” But he threatened furhter attacks obver the next two- to three- weeks that would “bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”
“Yet if during this period of time, no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets,” he said. “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 all the cards,” he said. “They have none.”
Trump spent much of his address — aired across broadcast and cable networks — pointing to the military success in destroying much of Iran’s missile capabilities, among other things. He called the country “decimated both “militarily and economically and every other way.” He said that military objectives were nearing completion.
Iran’s threats have choked off the oil supply that runs through the Strait of Hormuz, something that has sent oil prices soaring. In the speech, Trump said that it should be up to European allies to step up to open up the strait, while he also said that “when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.”
The president also addressed rising gas prices, promising that after the conflict ends, the const “will rapidly come back down.”
“The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat,” he said.
