Another Trump Ceasefire With Iran Crumbles
The Trump administrationβs phony ceasefire with Iran is over.
Maybe.
βTo me, I think itβs over,β President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, referring to a preliminary truce inked in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June. That ceasefire, an American capitulation intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz β a key oil and gas shipping route whose closure by Iran was wreaking havoc on the global economy β never quite took effect. The price of oil spiked to its highest level in weeks following Trumpβs Wednesday remarks.
βI donβt want to deal with them anymore. Theyβre scum,β said Trump, referring to Iranβs leaders, as he wrapped up his trip to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. βTheyβre cuckoo.β At one point in his remarks, the 80-year-old president claimed that a U.S. warship was attacked by the βthe Islamic Republic of Japan.β
The June agreement between the United States and Iran, designed to usher in further negotiations toward permanently ending the war that Trump began on February 28, echoed another faux ceasefire, signed in April, which was also largely a fiction.
Trumpβs statement that he βthinksβ the ceasefire has concluded surprised one U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. βShouldnβt he know?β the source said.
That official said the Trump administration had mismanaged the conflict and been repeatedly outmaneuvered by Iran, leading to a βtwilight stateβ between war and peace, which has allowed Tehran to fortify its defenses and reconsolidate power. βHe must be trying for the record of how many times you can lose the same war.β
An Intercept analysis found that, despite celebrating the June agreement as a victory, the Trump administration failed to achieve any of its war aims. For weeks, the White House has failed to respond to repeated requests for confirmation that the June ceasefire had collapsed and no goals of the war were reached. The White House did not reply to a question on Wednesday concerning the collapse of the ceasefire nor Trumpβs claim of an attack by βthe Islamic Republic of Japan.β
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The United StatesΒ attacked Iran on Tuesday, after reimposing sanctions on Iranian oil sales. U.S. Central Command said that it had struck βover 80 targets with precision munitions as an immediate response to Iranβs latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.β Iran did not claim responsibility forΒ Tuesdayβs attacks on commercial ships, including a Saudi oil tanker and a Qatari ship carrying liquefied natural gas in waters off Omanβs coast.
CENTCOM also claimed to have attacked βmore than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait.β U.S. officials have previously claimed to have completely annihilated Iranβs naval forces. βTheir Navy is gone,β Trump wrote on Truth Social on April 11, just after the first ceasefire was announced and fell apart.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iranβs top negotiator and Parliament speaker, accused the United States of multiple violations of the June ceasefire agreement, in a Tuesday post. βThe era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We donβt fold,β heΒ wrote. Iranβs Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in aΒ statementΒ published on state media on Wednesday, that in response to U.S. violations of the ceasefire, it had attacked 85 U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait and also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
βTheyβre vicious, violent people,β Trump said during his remarks in Ankara.
During the presidentβs war of choice on Iran, the U.S. and Israel struck more than 17,000 separate targets in 40 days β a rate of strikesΒ almost unprecedentedΒ in modern conflict, according to the civilian harm-monitoring group Airwars. On the first day of the war, the U.S. attacked the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary schoolΒ in Minab, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. In the weeks that followed, tens of thousands more civilians would be killed or wounded in U.S.βIsraeli strikes, according to World Health Organization estimates.Β
The official number of dead and wounded U.S. personnel stands at 426, an almost 11 percent increase since the first ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was struck on April 8.Β For months,Β The Intercept has reported that the Pentagonβs official tally of dead and wounded military personnel from the Iran war is a gross undercount, stemming from what another U.S. government official called a βcasualty cover-up.β The Defense Casualty Analysis System, which tracks βdeceased, wounded, ill or injuredβ service members forΒ Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known American casualties. The true number exceeds 625.
Trump vowed more attacks on Iran at the NATO summit. βIβll give them a little warning weβre going to hit them hard tonight,β he said. On Monday, Trump threatened attacks on Iranβs civilian infrastructure that would βaffect 91 million people,β almost all of them civilians.
βThe child-killing and terrorist U.S. military in the early hours of this morning openly violated the ceasefire and violated the Islamabad understanding by launching an airstrike on a number of coastal bases andΒ civilian stations,β the IRGC said in its statement.
CENTCOM claimed to have struck Iranian air defense systems, βcommand and control networks,β coastal radar sites, and other targets and threatened further attacks. βCENTCOM forces remain postured and prepared to hold Iran accountable when the agreement is not adhered to or obeyed,β the command posted on X.
After previously failing to make good on his pledge to ensure Iran βcan never obtain a nuclear weapon,β since Tehran still maintains its stockpile of enriched uranium, Trump said on Wednesday that the U.S. would βde-nuke it.β
The U.S. official laughed when appraised of Trumpβs pledge. βWhat is that supposed to mean?β he asked of Trumpβs denuclearization statement. The official said Trump had painted himself into a corner. βThere is one word that describes this man and this war: a trainwreck.β
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