Nog maar eens een artikel over de incompetentie van de vuilniszak-in-chief en zijn trawanten, die totaal verrast waren (ongetwijfeld door de rooskleurige voorspellingen van de corrupte oorlogsmisdadiger Bibi, die wel even een opstand zou creëren op de grond) dat het stoute Iran flink van zich af beet. Hoe kón dat nou toch gebeuren, nadat Iran het zelf al meermaals had aangekondigd als het aangevallen zou worden (en ongetwijfeld ook gewargamed is in het Pentagon).
https://time.com/article/2026/04/02/trump-iran-off-ramp/quote:
And yet behind the bluster has been a growing recognition within the West Wing that the situation may be slipping out of its control. Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation. In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran's muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war. Hegseth “was caught off guard. There’s no question,” says a person familiar with his thinking.
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As preparations for the war began, the Administration believed it had a winning formula. The U.S. would deliver an opening strike so overwhelming Tehran’s only viable response would be limited retaliation—enough to satisfy domestic audiences without inviting more attacks. It was a theory rooted in precedent. When Trump ordered the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani during his first term, Iran’s response was a missile strike on a U.S. base that caused no casualties and was telegraphed in advance. After Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the retaliation was similarly tempered.
Trump has long favored what aides call “one-and-done” operations. He has launched them in Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. In January, he pulled off the audacious capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, spiriting the autocrat out of the country to face trial in the U.S., and creating room for the ascension of a more compliant partner, acting president Delcy Rodriguez. He then moved to facilitate U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, among the largest in the world. Aides say Trump saw Venezuela as a demonstration that a swift, surgical intervention could topple a hostile regime, install a cooperative replacement, and secure American interests without drawing the nation into an open-ended confrontation.
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Operation Epic Fury began with a sweeping round of strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader. Tehran’s response was expansive: volleys of missiles and drones targeting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, barrages against Israeli cities, harassment of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, and coordinated attacks by proxy militias across the region. Hegseth was among those taken aback, says the person familiar with his thinking: “He was expecting the Iranians to fight back in some form. When they started attacking virtually the entire region, it sort of hit him like, ‘Whoa, we’re really in this now.’”
The Administration also appeared to be taken by surprise when Iran reached for a source of leverage: control over the Strait of Hormuz, which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through each day. In response to U.S. strikes, Tehran implemented a de facto blockade, declaring the channel effectively closed and restricting passage to non-hostile vessels. The resulting economic shock had domestic reverberations that went beyond the expectations of Trump’s inner circle. As gas prices skyrocketed, Trump sought to recast the higher costs as a necessary trade-off—a short-term burden in service of eliminating the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
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Trump also faced a Catch-22 of sorts. He wants to end the war, but not without achieving objectives that would definitively prevent Iran from inching closer to a nuclear weapon. In internal discussions, some national-security officials warned a sustained assault might do more to accelerate Tehran’s ambitions than deter them. “The only way they will think they can prevent something like this from happening again is to have a nuclear weapon,” says another White House official. “There is more of a burden on us now to have a tangible, enforceable agreement that keeps them sufficiently blocked from crossing the nuclear threshold.”
As the fighting drags on, Trump has been struck by Tehran’s resolve. “They are very tough. They're able to withstand tremendous pain,” he tells TIME. “So I respect them for that. The fact is, I think they're better negotiators than they are fighters.”
En met al z’n oorlogsdoelen die all over the place zijn en waarvan er geen één is bereikt, zit hij nu met een nog slechtere situatie dan voorheen: een regime dat beschadigd is, maar nog staat en z’n wraak inzet tegen de gehele regio en daarmee de wereldeconomie en de Straat van Hormuz nog meer als leverage kan inzetten dan voorheen.
En dan het zomaar dat hij zo gek is om ook nog een grondoperatie te starten of met een idiote actie het verrijkte uranium wil ophalen, iets waar de Iraniërs ongetwijfeld op voorbereid zijn. Zodra de doodskisten en bodybags binnenstromen op Amerikaanse bases waar hij met z’n belachelijke petje acte de presence geeft, krijgen al die republikeinse hielenlikkers die niks doen om deze mafketel te stoppen, een pandoering a la Jimmy Carter na z’n mislukte reddingsactie toen de ambassade in Teheran was gegijzeld.