Chris Bambery’s latest Iran war briefing considers the very limited options for the US president in continuing his war

On Wednesday evening Donald Trump addressed the American people live on television from the White House. It’s hard to know from what he said what is going on with the US war on Iran.

Trump claimed that the US’s ‘little journey’ to Iran had nearly accomplished ‘all of America’s military objectives’, adding that he would end the war in ‘two to three weeks’.

He then went onto state: ‘We are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world. We have all the cards. They have none.’

On the last point Iran controls the key Strait of Hormuz and is only letting through oil and gas tankers of certain nations it has no conflict with, but at the cost of a fee payable in Chinese renminbi. Iranian missiles are hitting Israel and the Gulf States.

From any rational view of this war it is Iran who holds the best hand of cards. There was no mention in Trump’s address of his ultimatum that Tehran must open the Strait by 6 April.

As argued previously the Iranians do not seem intimidated by threats of a ground attack on Kharg Island or their positions facing the Straits. A seaborne assault would involve warships going through the Straits of Hormuz. If the target was Kharg Island they would be in the shallow Persian Gulf where manoeuvrability is limited. If they took the island they would be in range of Iranian artillery as well as missiles and drones.

The name Gallipoli keeps popping up in my mind.

Trump also claimed Iran’s navy and air force had been destroyed and it was ‘no longer a threat’ to the US and the world. He then added that the US would continue to hit Iran ‘extremely hard’ for next several weeks.

Trump stated: ‘We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,’

While also saying, ‘discussions were ongoing.’

Trump may not be aware that back in 1965 Curtis LeMay, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, said of North Vietnam ‘we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.’

Operation Rolling Thunder followed. On 31 December 1967, the Department of Defense announced that 864,000 tons of American bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam, compared with 653,000 tons dropped during the entire Korean War and 503,000 tons in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War.

Some 30,000 North Vietnamese where killed.

Trump, of course, avoided the draft and never went to Vietnam, so maybe he doesn’t know about this.

Returning to LeMay, he argued that the war in Vietnam could be won by an air campaign. He was proved wrong. Given he was in charge of the firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945, in Tokyo alone over 100,000 civilians were killed. But the Japanese fought on. LeMay would go on to the be the running mate of the racist, segregationist Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, in the 1968 presidential election.

Trump has repeatedly claimed on social media that the Iranian leadership was seeking a ceasefire, claiming on Wednesday that Iran’s ‘new regime president’ had ‘just asked’ for one. Tehran responded by stating this was ‘false and baseless.’

There is no ‘new regime president.’ President Masoud Pezeshkian has been in that post since July 2024. Messages between the two states are being exchanged via Pakistan but this is not a negotiation. The US did send a 15 point set of demands Iran would simply never accept.

Given that America has twice attacked Iran whilst in the midst of negotiations the Iranians are going to sup with a long spoon. They will also have their own demands like sanctions relief. Similarly, they will not accept a ceasefire so Washington and Tel Aviv can recommence their attacks in six months time. They want a comprehensive peace deal.

With the war in its fifth week, it is unclear how Trump can find an off ramp. At the outset he said the objective was regime change, now both the US and Israel have given up on that. Then it was destroying Iran’s missile arsenal. Well, that hasn’t happened.

Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu claimed they would destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, particularly its stock of enriched uranium. Now Trump claims it’s buried so far underground that it is not usable. That seems unlikely.

He has also argued that the objective was preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, had issued a religious fatwah against doing just that. After Israel assassinated him that obstacle may have been removed and many Iranians must note that the US would not do this to North Korea because it has a nuclear bomb.

Regarding Trump’s ‘little journey’ to Iran, 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. In Lebanon 1300 have been killed by the Israel Defence Force, 400 of whom being Hezbollah fighters.

As the price of petrol hits $4 a gallon in the US, as business leaders there call for the war’s ends and its unpopularity grows in the polls Trump is under pressure to end a war which does not seem winnable. In that situation he seems determined to keep bombing Iran despite the fact no war has been won solely from the air. In Tehran they must be thinking the outcome will be decided by those who can take the most pain. Iran has suffered the pain of sanctions for decades. It is not going to throw in the towel.