Washington woke up this Thursday to an already familiar ritual: the publication of an angry post by Donald Trump with a new rhetorical escalation regarding Iran. The President of the United States announced on his social network, Truth, that he had given the order to the Navy to “shoot to kill” any ship that lays mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic passage blocked for weeks de facto by Iran and since April 12 by the United States. A fifth of the world’s hydrocarbons pass through this bottleneck. Trump also took the opportunity to update his count of enemy ships lying destroyed “at the bottom of the sea”: they are, according to the Republican, “ALL, the 159”.
In a subsequent message, with which Trump showed impatience to set the tone for the second day after his postponement of the ultimatum given to Tehran to agree to the demands of the United States at the negotiating table, the Republican proclaimed that his country has “total control” over Hormuz, given that, he added, “no ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy.” “It will remain so,” he added, “until Iran is in a position to make a deal.”
The previous day, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, with its fleet of small boats, missile-capable launches, and drones, had cast doubt on Trump’s conclusion with an attack on three ships in the strait, two of which were seized and redirected to Iranian ports for attempting to cross without permission from the authorities of the Islamic Republic.
Those attacks, which the White House disavowed by not considering them a violation of the ceasefire, were read as a response to similar operations by the US Navy, which in recent days has boarded several Iranian ships in Indian Ocean waters. This Thursday, a day on which the barrel of oil once again surpassed the psychological barrier of 100 dollars, the Pentagon reported the detention and boarding of M/T Majestic X, a tanker sanctioned by the Treasury Department that was transporting oil from Iran and sailing in those waters.
In his second message, Trump also seemed to justify his decision last Tuesday to postpone the end of the two-week extension he himself had given. This time, with no defined deadline. “Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who its leader is!” Trump wrote this Thursday. “They just don’t know!” The President of the United States attributed this uncertainty to an “internal struggle between the ‘hardliners’ and the ‘moderates,’ who are not moderate at all (but are gaining respect!).”
Trump has received criticism this week for backing down once again without a real counterpart from Iran, and for extending a deadline he had warned he would not extend. The White House justified the decision on Wednesday with a double argument: only the commander-in-chief will decide on matters concerning the end of the war, and if his negotiating team, led by Vice President J. D. Vance, did not finally travel to Islamabad (Pakistan) for a second round of talks after the failure of the first, it was due to the silence of the Iranian regime and the difficulty for the United States to find the right interlocutor.
“Permission to resume the war”
Trump’s power to decide on the next steps in the Middle East, however, goes beyond the American sphere. Or so Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz implied this Thursday, stating that his government is waiting for Washington’s “permission” to “resume the war against Iran” and “complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty.” The Israelis also seek to “return Iran to the Stone Age and darkness with the destruction of major energy and electricity facilities and national economic infrastructure,” Katz said in a video message released by his office.
Trump himself had already resorted to this “Stone Age” idea earlier this month in a series of messages in which his threats went further than ever, assuring that “an entire civilization” was poised to “die” if Tehran did not agree to a pact with the United States. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for his part, said last week that the Pentagon is ready to “push the button” and resume the war as soon as the president orders it.
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