Trump Positions US Military for Imminent War with Iran

“Peace through strength” is a slogan moved solidly back into play by Defense Secretary Hegseth who just promised that war, which just became a lot more intense, against the Houthis will be “unrelenting.” Tired of the endless attacks on commercial and military ships in and around the Red Sea, the Trump administration has vowed that the Houthis have a singular choice: stop all attacks now or “hell will rain down upon you like never before!”

But this is much bigger than that. Only a week ago, Trump made the stakes clear in a letter to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei on what the US says are its war intentions, saying, “I hope you will negotiate because, if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” So, with both the Iranians and their Houthi proxies that they repeatedly re-arm in Yemen, the president has made clear: Stand down and negotiate, or it’s war.

Trump has said he views the situation in the Red Sea as something his predecessor, President Biden, practically baited into being when he removed the declaration of the Houthis as a terrorist group, asking for nothing in return.

Biden announced in February 2021 that his administration was ending all U.S. offensive support for the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis, as he pledged support for the United Nations-led "initiative to impose a ceasefire," and restore peace talks in Yemen.

We’ve seen ever since how much respect Biden got for that gesture.

Salman Al-Ansari, a prominent geopolitical analyst from Saudi Arabia, told Fox News Digital that "Biden’s early appeasement of the Houthis, lifting them from the terror list with nothing in return, emboldened their aggression. The Houthis, an Iranian proxy, have dragged Yemen into chaos, destabilized the region, and attacked global shipping. Trump’s response is a necessary correction to Biden’s missteps, sending a clear message that piracy and terror won’t go unchecked."

In this Saudi’s view, these strikes against Saudi Arabia’s enemy on its border are “long overdue.” He notes, as his rationale, what we all know by now:

The Houthis have disrupted global trade, attacked U.S. forces and fueled instability. That said, it’s unclear how far the U.S. is willing to go in its campaign against them. The Red Sea and the Strait of Mandab are among the most strategic trade routes in the world, carrying over 20% of oil shipments and 13% of global trade."

Trump is not a man willing to dillydally in getting to an end. So, his position has quickly escalated to what, for the Houthis, boils down to, “Stop or face eradication or your military.”

Al-Ansari continues

"Any failure to secure them risks severe economic and security consequences. While Saudi Arabia remains committed to a political solution, that can't happen without serious pressure on both the Houthis and their backer, Iran. Strength, not appeasement, is the only language they understand."

The Houthis also gained traction in Yemen when Biden, as part of his grand gesture that yielded nothing but unrelenting trouble, asked Saudi Arabia to stand down in its own fight against Yemen, the Saudis’ oil competitor and enemy. About 80% of Yemen’s territory has been “liberated” from the Houthis. Trump now intends to finish that off, even though the Pentagon emphasizes the goal “is not regime change.”

"This is not an endless offensive," said Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, adding that the US was not seeking regime change, and would continue to use overwhelming force until its goals are met.

"This campaign will be relentless to degrade their capability and to open up shipping lanes in the region and to defend our homeland," he added.

The Houthis have never been a threat to the US homeland directly, but their impact on US foreign trade and oil certainly delivers an impact felt in the form of inflation at home and all over the world by raising the cost of global trade, while their bombardments limit the US military’s ability to operate in the region without being under direct threat.

The Houthis attempted an attack this week on the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman, but the attack appears to have been thwarted by the downing of eleven drones by US fighter jets and one missile that fell short.

People like Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who believe war is the solution, put their argument this way:

"These U.S. strikes have multiple benefits for the U.S.," Schanzer added. "It’s a sign to the Saudis that we are committed to their regional security. It’s a sign to Europe that we are committed to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, which will reduce shipping costs for their companies. And perhaps most importantly, we are watching the dismantling of Iran’s ‘ring of fire’ strategy in real time. The regime is growing weaker by the day, raising questions about a possible endgame to finally take out the Iranian nuclear program or even bring down the regime."

The Houthis, of course, have said their war is in support of Gaza in its battle against Israel. That war just turned back to full heat when Israel, again, began bombing Gaza, killing more than 400 Palestinians as of the writing of the first draft of this piece.

The Houthis have said they will continue their attacks until Israel backs down and out of Gaza.

Israel launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The surprise bombardment shattered a ceasefire in place since January and threatened to fully reignite the 17-month-old war….

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the strikes because of a lack of progress in talks to extend the ceasefire. The White House said it had been consulted and voiced support for Israel’s actions. The Israeli military ordered people to evacuate parts of northern and eastern Gaza, indicating that Israel could soon launch renewed ground operations.

The Houthis have made themselves Gaza’s ally in war, and Iran is believed by everyone in the region to be stoking war by supplying arms to Gaza, Labanon, Syria, the Houthis and others, surrounding Israel.

The Greater Israel-Iran conflict

While the White House stated recently that it supports Israel’s renewed action in Gaza, it appears to have a much broader game plan in view. It has just started a re-intensified war against the Houthis to Israel’s south timed to match with Israel’s restart of a re-intensified campaign in Gaza to the West. It would appear the White House is using this as a real threat of war against Iran to drive Iran to either reach an nuclear agreement that strips back its nuclear gains or find itself facing the same war.

One could reasonably look at the war in Yemen as preparation for a greater Iran war: take out all the firepower left in Yemen before attacking Iran in order to be able to fly over Yemen with no concern while attacking Iran or, at least, not have distracting skirmishes there to contend with in the heat of the bigger objective. In other words, eliminate one of Iran’s allies before the real war even begins.

This serves an immediate objective of communicating to Iran that the US is dead serious and is coming their way if they don’t sit down and negotiate. Iran, however, has stated it does not and will not negotiate under strong-arm pressure, but Trump’s response is essentially, “Get to it, or because we’re already starting to take this another direction.”

Trump appears to be playing his attacks on Yemen toward showing Iran he is resolute, but also using his threat to Iran to get them to order their Yemeni proxies into a solid ceasefire:

US President Donald Trump has warned Iran that it will face "dire" consequences if Yemen's Houthis continue to attack international shipping lanes.

He said the Iranian leadership would from now on be viewed as having pulled the trigger for "every shot fired by the Houthis…."

Trump's threat came after the Houthis targeted a US aircraft carrier in the Red Sea following US strikes on Yemen that its health ministry said had killed at least 53 people.

The US attacks on Yemen, which started on Saturday, have already been the biggest military engagement by the US in the Middle East since Trump took office. Trump wrote on Truth Social,

"Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN. And IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!"

Iran, of course, denies any involvement in destabilizing any part of the Middle East.

Trump’s friend Tuck sounds warning

Trucker Carlson warned the president that war with Iran is a menacing proposition for the whole world:

Tucker Carlson had a dire warning for the president as he cautioned against the one action that would “almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths.”

There remained no love lost for warmongering neocons where the political commentator was concerned as some have been calling to bring Iran’s nuclear aspirations to an end through force. Now, as President Donald Trump warned of “dire” consequences for the Islamist regime as proxies took credit for attempting to strike U.S. forces, Carlson cut to the chase in warning about sparking a war with Iran.

“It’s worth pointing out that a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths at bases throughout the Middle East, and cost the United States tens of billions of dollars,” the commentator posted to X on Monday. “The cost of future acts of terrorism on American soil may be even higher.”

“Those aren’t guesses. Those are the Pentagon’s own estimates,” he continued. “A bombing campaign against Iran will set off a war, and it will be America’s war. Don’t let the propagandists lie to you.”

Trump’s friend gave his warning after the president fired off the following warning of his own when the USS Harry S. Truman was attacked:

“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” said Trump on Truth Social. “Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there.”

This second threat of a wider spreading war with Iran was not lost on Tuck. (The first not-so-veiled threat having been in Trump’s letter to Iran last week.)

Trump is resolute along with his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, that Iran will never get nukes. We have heard from Netanyahu for decades, of course, that Iran is only weeks or months away from having nuclear weapons. Whether this danger has been secretly thwarted in unseens ways behind the scenes, such as the Stuxnet virus used to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the Obama days, or has been routinely overstated is something only those privy to all US and Israeli intelligence can actually know, but there are plenty in the US military industrial complex who push the narrative and who are not happy with Upchuck Tuck for going against it.

The Iranium reaction

Trump, nonetheless, appears to be soldiering forward with his Iranian attack plans. This is in keeping with the modus operandi exhibited in his takeover plans for the 51st state of the United States of America. In that situation, he is offering something he believes Canadians will find to their own good (because it is to his own good in expanding his empire) while strong arming them with economic warfare to pressure them toward a deal. In Iran’s case, where sanctions have been in play for decades, on and off to varying degrees but never to much effect, he’s making it clear that the strong arm is an actual military arm.

One way he is making the threat real is by having a US reconnaissance plane fly back and forth in the Persian Gulf just a short distance due west of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant:

For several days, the United States has sent military surveillance aircraft into the Persian Gulf and they have taken up circling patterns near Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.

The aircraft, using Callsign "Ovrld02" has been loitering for HOURS each day.

The most obvious reason for routine daily flights in line of sight of the plant from the air would be the possibility of a planned attack on the plant. In the very least, it would be to make it clear to Iran that such a threat is waiting to happen.

But the president’s actions do not stop with visible threats of war preparation. Just as you want to spy on the areas you are planning to attack, you want to eliminate your enemy’s ability to spy on you. To that end, the US military just sank an Iranian spy ship. If true, as reported, that would be considered an act of war by any nation.

Iranian reconnaissance ship Zagros was targeted and sunk by United States forces in the Red Sea, according to Saudi media outlet Al-Hadath.

The Iranian naval intelligence ship specializes in signals intelligence … and is regarded as the most advanced reconnaissance vessel in Iran's navy. It is also recognized as the country's first intelligence-gathering ship, designed for electronic surveillance.

The alleged attack happened as Israel carried out widespread airstrikes in Gaza following reports that Hamas was planning a large-scale assault similar to October 7.

The immediate likelihood there is some measure of blinding the Houthis as they fire upon Israel so they don’t see attacks coming back at them or perhaps track their own missiles into Israel, but the broader threat is to Iran whose most-high-tech ship it was, given the president’s word that Iran would directly pay the cost for any further action by the Houthis.

National security adviser Mike Waltz said that the United States is prepared to expand its military campaign in Yemen by targeting Iranian ships aiding the Houthis rebel group.

"We will hold not only the Houthis accountable, but we're going to hold Iran, their backers, accountable as well," Waltz stated, warning that Iranian intelligence and military assets supporting Houthi attacks could become U.S. targets.

Well, now they have. This places the US on an immediate and direct war footing with Iran, though Iran may choose not to claim it as a declaration of war in order to avoid a much larger attack from the US on its nuclear facilities now that the US is hovering almost overhead with daily surveillance.

Waltz, speaking on ABC's This Week, outlined potential targets, which include Iranian ships near Yemen that provide intelligence to the Houthis, Iranian military trainers, and other logistic support. He emphasized that the U.S. military campaign will not be confined to Houthi forces alone.

Watz presented a map showing another Iranian spy ship that may be targeted by the US—the Behshad.

The U.S. has long accused Iran of assisting Houthi rebels in their maritime operations, particularly through the Saviz and its successor, the Behshad. Both vessels have been linked to intelligence gathering and logistical support for the Houthis.

Last year, Iran warned against any U.S. action targeting the Behshad, with its United Nations representative issuing a direct caution to Washington.

The sinking of the Zagros, if the report is accurate, shows the US now solidly making incremental moves in that direction—incremental in that the US could easily have destroyed all of Iran’s spy ships at once, but for some reason destroyed only one. The incremental approach indicates President Trump is holding out some hope that Iran will still negotiate some kind of nuclear peace deal before the US launches a potentially larger war in the Middle East. It may be giving time to suss out Russia’s response, too.

So far, US targets taken out in Yemen have included terrorist training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities, and weapons storage facilities, and this one possible ship.

Trump has said its strikes will continue "with overwhelming lethal force" until the Houthis are eliminated as a threat….

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Sunday that over the past 18 months, Houthi fighters had attacked the U.S. Navy "directly" 174 times and had targeted commercial shipping 145 times using "guided precision anti-ship weaponry."

The Houthis in recent years have attacked unarmed Western ships carrying goods through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden – and the U.S. military has responded with strikes that were seemingly limited in scope, not a full-scale declaration of war.

The ground has shifted in that respect now:

"We are already on day 3 of the military campaign and it has been unrelenting. This is much different than the smaller and more limited strikes during the Biden administration," said Hudson fellow Rebecca Heinrichs.

"The days of pinprick responses where we allow that to occur is over. That's, I think, a pretty clear statement from the administration as a whole as well," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters Monday of the renewed offensive.

Given that the Houthis haven’t attacked maritime positions since November, until their recent responses on the Truman to US attacks on their Yemen positions, the present US attacks would appear to be more geared around helping to defend Israel from their attacks on ground facilities in Israel and possibly softening the ground for attacks directly against Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

On the same day that Trump pushed his desire to negotiate with Iran and threatened the not-even-implied possibility of a military alternative, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised tougher economic measures that also sound like a threat of war:

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, Bessent vowed that a second Trump administration would “shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities” and further sever the country’s access to the international financial system.

Even if that were done economically only, as it was with Russia through sanctions and turning off access to financial clearing operations and cutting off their banked wealth, the US would certainly declare actions of that kind, if they were taken against the US, as a declaration of war. So, Trump is operating on a wartime footing now, even if holding off from much more devastating action to give a little more time for forced negotiation, which, again, Iran has said it will not engage in.

This contradiction — the offer of dialogue alongside threats of escalated economic warfare — only further reinforces Iran’s skepticism toward any overtures from Washington. The Iranians have been very clear that they will not negotiate while being pressured. Khamenei has often called the talks with the U.S. “unwise, unintelligent and dishonorable” and this is in concordance with the cultural disposition of the Iranians who have been brought up to suspect the West.

So, the US spy plane off Bushehr and the taking out of an Iranian spy ship, and the “unrelenting” bombing of the Houthis remaining military operations look like definitive steps into war that are intentionally preceding at just enough of a slowed pace to give a final chance for Iran to back down before the US goes all out, done with the resolve that going all out is likely to happen in the president’s mind.

"He’s doing what should have been done under the Biden administration," said Gene Moran, former Navy captain and former advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But at the same time, "We shouldn’t be fooled into thinking we can knock down an ideology with kinetic weapons. We’ve made that mistake time over time, something needs to be done with Iran.

The US has never proven it can knock down an ideology with any kind of weapon or with sanctions or with anything else.

Iran’s claims that it is not creating nuclear weapons is nonsense on the very face of the argument. They admit to having a lot of 60% enriched uranium, and there is no civilian use that requires 60% enriched uranium.

So, it looks like the anti-war president is marching directly into war unless Iran caves in at the last minute.