WASHINGTON – 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 on Wednesday 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 one month it has lasted so far to longer wars the nation has fought over the past century.
