American Оbserver

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he knew no short way out of the impasse pushed oil prices close to $125 a barrel – as high as during the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, the military adviser to the supreme leader, wrote on his X account: “The siege scenario will fail and Iran will never lose the strait of Hormuz. History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of ​​Oman. Both the field and diplomacy are moving forward with the coordination of the leader of the revolution and the support of the people.” The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy. Iran has proposed that talks with the US on its nuclear programme be parked while both sides agree terms for allowing ships to resume passage along the strait. In Iran the foreign ministry has urged its parliament to recognise that Iran’s plans being hatched in conjunction with Oman do not require fresh Iranian legislation. It is also urging that Iran avoid terms such as “tolls”, and instead assert its pre-existing right to charge fees for services rendered. Rubio, and the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, held talks in Washington on Wednesday about the strait. An email sent by the state department to embassies reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested the US was trying to become involved in largely European-led plans for the oversight of the strait once the conflict ends. The US is offering to coordinate diplomacy and communications between countries using the strait by reviving and broadening a 12 nation International Maritime Security Construct, a pre-existing naval operation set up in after threats to shipping by the Iranian navy. #khamenei#strait#hormuz#iran#control 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Mojtaba Khamenei: the Strait of Hormuz Remains Under Iran’s Control 🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes. “Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor. The statement said Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway”, and that “new management of the strait will bring comfort and progress for the benefit of all the nations of the region and economic blessings will being joy to the hearts of the people”. Iran has sought to extract a price for being attacked by exerting control over the strait, the narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of global oil typically transits. Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would “guard its modern technological capacities – from nano to bio to nuclear and missile – as their national capital and will guard it like their maritime land and air borders”. No recording or visual sighting of Khamenei has been broadcast since he was appointed supreme leader in early March. Reports have suggested that he was severely injured in the bombing that killed his 86-year-old father and predecessor on 28 February. He is said to be in hospital being treated for injuries. His new statement suggests Iran is determined to implement a new fees regime in the strait that it will present as benefiting the entire region as a belated assertion of regional sovereignty. Since 13 April the US has mounted a counter-blockade designed to stop oil tankers moving in or out of Iranian ports, seizing up the Iranian oil industry. With Pakistan-mediated talks at an impasse, there is little sign of either blockade being lifted, pushing the oil price above $120 a barrel. Vessel traffic levels are still extremely low, sometimes as low as three ships a day compared with 120–140 in normal conditions. “Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters,” Khamenei’s statement said. The strait’s closure has put pressure on Trump, as oil and petrol prices have rocketed before crucial midterm elections, as well as on his Gulf allies, which use the waterway to export their oil and gas. #khamenei#strait#hormuz#iran#control 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Could Trump Put Any Kind of Trust In a Deal With Iran? Iran’s foreign minister said that the strait of Hormuz is now fully open to commercial vessels, reinforcing hopes for an eventual end to the war in the Middle East and sending oil prices tumbling despite analysts’ warnings that there will be no immediate widespread resumption of passage through the vital waterway. In a barrage of social media posts, Donald Trump claimed on Friday that Iran had agreed never to close the strategic waterway again, hailing “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” However, Abbas Araghchi’s pledge was given only qualified support by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has reinforced its already powerful authority in Tehran during the war. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Ghalibaf, later warned that if the US blockade continued, “the strait of Hormuz will not remain open”. Whether the strait was open or closed and the regulations governing it “will be determined by the field, not by social media”, Ghalibaf added, in a swipe at the US president. Trump also said that Iran had agreed to indefinitely suspend its nuclear programme, and would not receive any frozen funds from the US. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that talks over a deal to end the war would “probably” be held this weekend. Separately, the US president told Reuters that Washington would work with Iran to recover its enriched uranium, which he referred to as “nuclear dust” that would be retrieved at “a nice leisurely pace” and moved to the US. Iranian authorities made no immediate comment on the claim, but Tehran has long asserted that its right to enrich uranium inside the country is sacrosanct. When asked about a report that the US was considering a $20bn cash for uranium deal, Trump said: “It’s totally false. No money is changing hands.” Araghchi statement that the strait was “declared completely open” came as a new 10-day truce in Lebanon entered its first full day, partly pausing fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah Islamist militant movement and offering a fragile relief in parts of the country after weeks of relentless Israeli airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians. Trump said that Israel would cease attacks on Lebanon, claiming: “They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A.” Minutes before that post, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, uploaded a video to his official YouTube page declaring that Israel was not done yet with Hezbollah. He said: “We have not yet finished the job. There are things we plan to do to address the remaining rocket threat and the drone threat.” Soon after, reports emerged that an Israeli drone strike had killed one person in southern Lebanon. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, insisted that the IDF was not withdrawing from the country and that military action could resume. Iranian state television quoted a senior military official saying commercial vessels would be allowed to travel through the strait of Hormuz but only along a determined route and with the permission of the IRGC navy. The US blockade of Iranian ports and shipping will remain in place for the moment, Trump said, and few vessels are likely to risk passage through the strait in such uncertain circumstances, meaning any return to normality is still distant. “The naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete,” the US president posted on his Truth Social network, adding that “this process should go very quickly”. The strait’s closure by Iran shortly after the conflict began has spiked the price of oil, fuelled inflation and threatens a deep economic crisis that could trigger recessions around the world. Trump, however, said that he had rebuffed an offer from Nato. “They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!” he posted on social media, before thanking Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Qatar. #strait 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ The US and Iranian delegations left Pakistan soon after the talks ended. Vance said he spoke with Trump at least half a dozen times during the talks, held during a 14-day ceasefire announced by the US, Israel and Iran overnight on 7 and 8 April. “We need to see an affirmative commitment that [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said. “That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.” Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who led Tehran’s negotiators, said he and his colleagues had offered “constructive initiatives” while the US had been “unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement, and the foreign ministry said more time was needed. “Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session,” the ministry’s spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said, according to the state broadcaster IRIB. Pakistani mediators called on the US and Iran to refrain from renewing hostilities and said they would try to arrange a fresh round of talks. “It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire,” said Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar. Vance was accompanied by the US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner. They met Ghalibaf and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, for several negotiating sessions at the Serena hotel in Islamabad, with Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, also present. Iran’s delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war. They carried shoes and bags of children killed during the bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said. A Pakistani source said the discussions, the highest-level direct contact between the US and Iran since 1979, were unpredictable in tone. “There were mood swings from the two sides, and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” a Pakistani source said after the first round. Trump said: “The only thing left, really, is their water, which would be very devastating to hit. I would hate to do it, but it’s their water, their desalinisation plans, their electric generating plants, which are very easy to hit.” The president was asked if gas and oil prices might be lower by the US midterms in November, an indication that attacking Iran was not an economic mistake. Prices “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher,” a non-committal Trump replied. At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire after his Sunday prayers and said he felt “closer than ever” to Lebanon’s people. #trump#iran#strait#hormuz#vance#blockading 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Negotiations With Iran Went Belly Up. Will the War Re-Start? 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump has said the US will begin blockading the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to take control of the strategic waterway from Iran in the aftermath of failed peace negotiations between the countries in Pakistan. The US president also threatened to bomb Iran’s water treatment facilities, power plants and bridges, repeating an earlier threat, if Tehran does not agree to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, the key sticking point between the two sides. Trump’s surprise announcement of a blockade came after face-to-face peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad that lasted 21 hours collapsed on Sunday morning. Vance said Iran had refused to give up the possibility of developing nuclear weapons, while the Iranian delegates said Washington needed to do more to win their trust. Risking another increase in oil prices, Trump said he had instructed the US navy to begin “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and he accused Iran of extortion with its own scheme of charging tolls to tankers. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by declaring that if any warships approached the strait to enforce a blockade – usually considered an act of war – it would be considered a breach of the current ceasefire and would be dealt with strongly. They insisted the strait remained under Iranian control. Two US destroyers crossed and recrossed the strait without incident on Saturday, although Iranian media said they were threatened as they left. The US military said it was the start of a mine-clearance mission. Trump said US warships would “seek and interdict every vessel” that had paid Iran since the start of the conflict and begin de-mining the central section of the strait, previously declared a “hazardous area” by Tehran, although it is unclear how many mines have been laid. About 100 tankers have transited the strait since the US and Israel started bombing Iran, paying up to $2m each time for passage. Many were bound for China and India, carrying Iranian oil products, and chasing them down could complicate relations between the US and the importing nations. #trump#iran#strait#hormuz#vance#blockading 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ Questions about the president’s mental state have grown louder since Trump’s expletive-ridden Easter Sunday message, with Democrats and critics calling him “unhinged” and a “madman”. Senator Patty Murray described Trump’s post as “the rantings of a bloodthirsty lunatic” while Senator Chris Coons said: “This is a threat to commit a war crime.” Representative Joaquin Castro said the threat “suggests he’s either considering using a nuclear weapon or wants Iran to believe he would”. Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman said it was time to invoke the 25th amendment against Trump, a call to remove him from office and replace him with the next in line to the presidency. “In just 48 hours, the president has gone from threatening war crimes to threatening genocide,” Watson Coleman wrote. “He is clearly unstable and must be set aside.” It is not only Democrats. Trump’s Middle East war has fractured the American right, driving a deep divide between traditional hawkish conservatives who have long clamored for military action against Iran and the president’s anti-interventionist “America First” loyalists. Reacting to Trump’s Tuesday post, former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently split with the president, in part over what she said was his abandonment of America First policy principles, called for invoking the “25TH AMENDMENT!!!” “Not a single bomb has dropped on America,” she wrote. “We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.” The Truth Social post came the morning after a chaotic White House press conference in which Trump voiced his threats to reporters. “The entire country could be taken out in one night,” he told reporters on Monday, “and that night might be tomorrow night.” When a reporter noted that deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure violate the Geneva conventions, Trump did not dispute the point. “I hope I don’t have to do it,” he said, then pivoted: “Forty-seven years they’ve been negotiating with these people. They’re great negotiators, and because they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.” Asked whether the war was winding down or escalating, he said only: “I can’t tell you.” Asked about a ceasefire, he said: “I can’t talk about the ceasefire.” He reiterated the 8pm ET Tuesday deadline for Iran to reopen the strait or face strikes on energy infrastructure and bridges. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard navy for their part said on Monday that the Strait of Hormuz “will never return to its previous state” for the US and its allies. Trump also claimed, without providing evidence, that US intelligence had intercepted communications from Iranian civilians near active bombing sites urging American forces to continue. “Please keep bombing,” he quoted the alleged intercepts as saying. He dismissed concerns that destroying power and water infrastructure would harm ordinary Iranians, insisting they would willingly endure such losses for the chance at regime change. The rhetorical escalation of recent days also sits alongside a pattern of contradictions. Trump said in recent weeks that the US had no strategic need for the strait of Hormuz; days later he made its reopening the central condition of his ultimatum to Tehran. He claimed total dominance of Iranian airspace even as a US fighter jet was shot down over the country. #democrats#trump#iran#middle#east#strait#hormuz 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

8pm ET: The Trump Last Judgement 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump on Tuesday morning threatened to completely annihilate the entirety of Iranian civilization should their government ignore his 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The president’s own words, posted publicly and tied to a specific deadline and set of demands, provide unusually direct evidence of intent to violate international law, and were being met with shock and dismay by Democrats. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” the US president posted on Truth Social about the country with more than 90 million people. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” “This is an extremely sick person,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said, accusing Republicans of abetting the president in plunging the US into a seemingly open-ended war. “Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.” Trump followed with a reference to “complete and total regime change” and signed off with “God Bless the Great People of Iran”, making a formulation that suggested the destruction of the state and the benediction of its people were in his telling, compatible. “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end,” he wrote, referencing the Islamic regime’s takeover of the country in 1979. “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.” Neither the US nor Iran is a member of the international criminal court, meaning no formal ICC jurisdiction applies. The more immediate legal framework is the Geneva conventions of 1949 onwards, which both countries have ratified. Article 33 of the Fourth Convention explicitly prohibits collective punishment of a civilian population. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I – whose core principles are binding as customary international law even on states, like the US and Iran, that never ratified it – prohibits attacks on infrastructure indispensable to civilian survival, with only a narrow exception for objects used exclusively to sustain enemy armed forces. The US has itself acknowledged this customary obligation, though the adoption of this position came under the Biden administration in 2024. In one formal UN submission, Washington said it treated the fundamental protections of Additional Protocol I as legally binding even without ratification. Trump’s latest threat against the totality of Iranian civilization “shocks the conscience”, House Democratic leaders said in a joint statement, calling for a “decisive congressional response”. “The House must come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III,” Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California said in their statement. #democrats#trump#iran#middle#east#strait#hormuz 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ “Make no mistake: You won’t gain anything through war crimes. The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.” Trump’s expletive-laden post also drew criticism on Capitol Hill. “Happy Easter, America. As you head off to church and celebrate with friends and family, the President of the United States is ranting like an unhinged madman on social media,” the Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on X. He’s threatening possible war crimes and alienating allies. This is who he is, but this is not who we are. Our country deserves so much better.” The destruction on Thursday of the region’s tallest bridge, hailed in Iran as an engineering marvel, pointed to a grim new phase of the war, in which the US president has threatened to throw Iran back to the “stone ages”. During war, international law protects civilians and what are known as civilian objects, such as infrastructure, rules that are enshrined in the Geneva conventions. Oona A Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale University, said the US president had offered no explanation that would make the civilian objects he has threatened to target into lawful military objectives. She also said other nations had an obligation to ensure respect of the Geneva conventions, and not to aid and abet wrongful acts. “If these threatened attacks were to be carried out, they would constitute war crimes,” said Hathaway. “Immiserating the civilian population for bargaining leverage is not lawful.” Iranian steel manufacturing sites, petrochemicals plants, universities and medical facilities have all been bombed during the joint US-Israeli campaign. About 81,000 civilian sites have been damaged, including 61,000 homes, 19,000 commercial sites, 275 medical centres, and nearly 500 schools, according to Iranian authorities. The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said a number of its facilities had been targeted by Iranian drone attacks, resulting in fires and “significant material losses”. Kuwait also reported that two power and water desalination plants sustained “significant material damage” after being attacked by Iranian drones. The attack happened on the last day of the holidays to mark Iranian new year, and according to reports many families were picnicking nearby when missiles punched through the middle of the bridge, sending up a giant fireball. The day trippers, who had pitched tents to enjoy the holiday, ran screaming. Local authorities said that 13 people were killed and 95 injured in the attack. The bridge had not yet been opened. It was so far known only as B1, ahead of an inauguration due in the summer. A civil engineer in Iran who worked on other significant infrastructure projects said that recent strikes on civilian infrastructure, all built with indigenous knowledge, had already “made it impossible to conceal hostility toward the Iranian people behind the mask of mere opposition to the government”. But it was the strike on the bridge that was most painful for him, as he said it had no military, nuclear or government link. “The target of this attack was nothing other than Iran’s pride,” he said. “A nation that has achieved such a level of self-sufficiency and productivity cannot be returned to the stone age.” #iran#strait#hormuz#trump#israel#war 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Promised To Send Iran to Hell 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump issued an expletive-laden warning on Sunday that Tehran had until Tuesday night to reopen the strait of Hormuz or the US would obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges. Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”. The latest threat of escalation in the five-week war followed the rescue of a second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter by US commandos, ending a two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran. Iran distributed images showing the wreckage of several aircraft, but did not deny that US forces had rescued the officer who had taken cover in a mountainous area while American special forces and Iranian troops raced to find him. Trump has extended deadlines at least twice for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz, which has sent the price of oil shooting up, and shifted his deadline again from Monday to Tuesday in his expletive-laden post, before later making clear he meant Tuesday night. The US president posted on his Truth Social website: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Crude oil prices opened higher on Monday, with the West Texas Intermediate – the US benchmark – rising 1.86% to more than $112 a barrel and Brent climbing above $110. Trump separately suggested that there is a “good chance” of an agreement with Iran on Monday, telling Fox News that negotiations were taking place. “If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” he said. Later on Sunday, he posted again, giving a more precise deadline of: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!” However, Trump has repeatedly said since the US-Israeli war started on 28 February that Iran wants to make a deal. Iran has acknowledged that messages have been passed between the two sides, including through Pakistan. But Tehran insists that it has not entered into peace talks. Iranian officials also fear that they will be targeted when they break cover to head to any negotiations, according to diplomatic intermediaries. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iran parliament, responded to Trump’s latest threats in a social media post. “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following Netanyahu’s commands,” he wrote. #iran#strait#hormuz#trump#israel#war 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ US forces have struck more than 12,300 targets inside Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury, according to a statement released by US Central Command on Wednesday. Since the start of the war, the Trump administration has sent mixed and at times contradictory signals about the US’s objectives. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran’s leadership was seeking a ceasefire, and in a Wednesday social media post described Iran’s “new regime president” as having “just asked” for one – which Tehran called “false and baseless”. Furthermore, it was unclear who Trump had spoken to – Iran has a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after he was killed on the opening day of US-led airstrikes against Iran. Iranian president Masoud ​Pezeshkian took office in July 2024. Before the president’s speech on Wednesday, ​Pezeshkian appealed directly to the American people with a message of his own. “Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war?” ​Pezeshkian asked in a letter posted in English on his X account. “Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behavior?” ​Pezeshkian suggested the US had entered the war at Israel’s urging, and insisted that Iran’s attacks on its neighbors was a “measured response grounded in legitimate self-defense”. “Is ‘America First’ truly among the priorities of the US government today?” he asked. Complicating the picture further, Trump has lashed out at the US’s allies, citing their refusal to join the war effort and inaction to reopen the strait of Hormuz in a series of escalating social media posts and interviews. In his remarks on Wednesday evening he made no mention of Nato, but earlier in the day he told Reuters he was “absolutely without question” considering withdrawing from Nato. He also told the Telegraph that he was “never swayed” by the 77-year-old military alliance and “always knew they were a paper tiger”. Trump has suggested that a ceasefire would depend on Tehran reopening the strait of Hormuz, while indicating that US forces could be “out of Iran pretty quickly”. He left open the possibility of “spot hits” inside Iran if necessary. In his speech, the president also took pains to distinguish the current conflict from America’s often lengthy past wars, calling the 32-day military campaign “so powerful, so brilliant”. With the war in its fifth week, key US objectives remain unclear. Trump has downplayed concerns about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, dismissing it as too deeply buried underground to matter. He had previously argued that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was a major justification for the war. Analysts have disputed the US president’s claims that Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, thousands of US troops remain positioned in the region, providing the option of a broader ground campaign after weeks of airstrikes targeting Iran. #iran#trump#hormuz#strait#nato 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Bogged Down. Does He Have a Way Out? 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump used a prime time address to the nation on Wednesday evening to declare the month-long war in Iran a success “nearing completion”, despite a spiraling conflict that has caused economic turmoil across the globe, fractured transatlantic alliances and eroded the president’s approval ratings. In remarks from the White House, Trump argued that the US’s “little journey” to Iran had nearly accomplished “all of America’s military objectives”, but offered little clarity on how he planned to wind down the conflict over the next “two to three weeks”. “We are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world,” Trump said in the 19-minute speech, delivered from Cross Hall of the White House. “We have all the cards. They have none.” Acknowledging the economic pain caused by the conflict, he blamed a “short-term” rise in gas prices on Iran’s actions, and insisted the US had become energy independent. Oil prices rose and Asian stocks traded lower immediately after Trump’s address, which did little to soothe investor concerns over the closure of the strait of Hormuz. The US president reiterated his call for other nations to help secure the global oil chokepoint: “Grab it and cherish it.” Iran has effectively closed the strait since the beginning of the conflict, causing oil prices to soar. In the US, the cost of gas surged past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 this week. Trump did not mention a looming deadline he set for Iran to open the strait. Amid the uncertainty, brent crude – the international standard – jumped 4.9% to $106.16 a barrel, while gold dipped 2% to $4,718.70 an ounce and silver lost 4.9% to $72.39 an ounce. Ticking through a list of claimed achievements, Trump said Iran’s navy and air force had been decimated, leaving the country weak and “no longer a threat” to the US and the world. He, however, said the US would continue to hit Iran “extremely hard” for next several weeks. “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” he said, even as he said “discussions were ongoing”. Democrats criticised Trump’s address as “incoherent” and doing little to answer “the most basic questions the American people”. Democratic senator Mark Warner said in a statement that Trump owed Americans more answers about a conflict that has driven up prices on gas and other essentials, “with consequences that will continue to ripple through the economy for a long time”. Senator Chris Murphy said: “No one in America, after listening to that speech, knows whether we are escalating or deescalating.” The Republican senator Ted Cruz backed Trump, saying he “was exactly right tonight”, while former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green said all she heard from his speech was “war”, and “nothing” to lower the costs of living. The war continues to grind on, with thousands of deaths in Iran and in countries across the Middle East since 28 February. Strikes rocked Tehran on Wednesday morning. And Israel said it had carried out two waves of attacks on Tehran and claimed to have killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Iran has continued to retaliate, with missile attacks on central Israel and across the Middle East – including a barrage timed just hours before the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to estimates from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, at least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the war began, though precise figures are difficult to verify. In Lebanon, more than 1,300 people have been killed, according to the country’s health ministry. Most of those who have died have been Lebanese civilians, but Hezbollah estimates about 400 have been its fighters. And a total of 19 people have been killed and 515 injured in Israel since the war began. #iran#trump#hormuz#strait#nato 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸