Trump's latest Iran war demand
The president and his top aides spent the weekend “framing their Iran operation as a resounding military success while imploring other countries to join their effort to resolve a worsening energy crisis related to the Strait of Hormuz,” says The Wall Street Journal.
Trump said on Sunday that he’s demanded that about seven countries send warships to help reopen the strait and keep it open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar, reports The Associated Press.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had told Trump before the war that a U.S. attack could prompt Iran to close the strait, but Trump told his team that Iran likely would capitulate before closing the strait — and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, says a separate WSJ article.
Trump and some of his advisers were surprised by the breadth and scope of Iran’s retaliation, which also included missiles and drones launched at regional countries from Azerbaijan to Oman, the WSJ says.
Those Gulf allies are privately furious with the United States, according to diplomats and others. They blame the Trump administration for triggering a war that’s caused them to be attacked and pierced their image as a luxurious, business-friendly area free of the region’s chaos, according to the WSJ.
Yet another WSJ article discusses Iranians’ sense of betrayal after Israel and the United States said their attacks were to pave the way for Iranians to rise up and topple their government. Many Iranians “cheered on the offensive as a last resort to overthrow rulers who killed thousands of protesters in January,” the WSJ says.
But now they face the possibility that the war will end with them living under the same authoritarian rule and crushing international sanctions, but in devastated cities with an aggrieved government that’s vowed to take an even harder line against dissent.
On Friday, Trump told Fox News Radio that he thinks it’s unlikely that Iranians will rise up soon against a regime that remains dangerous. And Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday that Iranians might not be able to bring down the regime.
Meanwhile, Trump and White House officials increasingly have complained about negative media coverage of the conflict. On Saturday, Trump applauded his broadcast regulator Brendan Carr for threatening to pull broadcast licenses unless they “correct course.”
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