Here's the latest chest thumping from Trump who announced another escalation with Iran on his social media site this Friday evening:
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he directed the U.S. Central Command to carry out a bombing raid, hitting military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island.
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post.
He added that he had “chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island.”
“However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump wrote.
Less than an hour later, the president once again posted on Truth, saying: “Iran had plans of taking over the entire Middle East, and completely obliterating Israel. JUST LIKE IRAN ITSELF, THOSE PLANS ARE NOW DEAD!”
Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Barack Obama Ben Rhodes was asked about the breaking news by All In host Chris Hayes, and Rhodes made it clear that nothing good was going to come from this despite all of the blather to the contrary by Trump and his sycophant enablers:
HAYES: Yeah, and this sort of escalatory trap we've been talking about Ben right before it came on air, the president announcing that US forces bombed what he said were military targets in this Kharg Island, an island where about 90 percent of Iranian domestic oil production is sort of transited and processed.
He said basically, I have sort of withheld from bombing the oil targets, but unless they let ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I'm going to take out their oil infrastructure.
And I know you've spent some time thinking about talking about Kharg Island. How do you interpret this in terms of a path towards more or less escalation or, you know, cessation of hostilities?
RHODES: It's a path to escalation, Chris. I mean, this is the logic of launching a regime change war where you don't know how it's going to go. You know, I've talked about this for many years. Anyone who looks at Iran knows that this kind of regime, given its ideology and its depth, is not going to come out and have non-conditional surrender.
And so what is left? Nothing is left but escalation. So they don't submit in the first two weeks. So you start bombing Kharg Island. Well, this is a regime that has made clear that the more violence and chaos they face, the more they want to spread violence and chaos to their neighbors and to the global economy, because that's their survival strategy.
So this doesn't disincentivize them. It incentivizes them to just continue the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. They have an ally in the Houthis that could start firing missiles at the Red Sea oil traffic. They have escalatory cards to play too.
And I think what is so dangerous about this moment is Trump in his kind of frantic grasping for something he can call a victory just keeps bombing more things, but, you know, you can't engineer the politics inside of Iran with an air campaign that the Iranians know, is probably time limited.
The Iranians know that Trump is under political pressure. They know that he's feeling the squeeze of world prices. Why would they stop doing that? And so this is the inevitable logic of escalation that takes hold when you have no plan, you have no clear objective, and you have no exit strategy.
Trump seems to think he's going to be able to bully them into surrendering, or that he's just going to be able to declare victory and walk away from the disaster he's created with no consequences if that doesn't work.
Don't be surprised if oil prices go over $120 a barrel by Monday.
