President Trump gave Tehran another reason to worry, posting a video clip Saturday on Truth Social showing him ordering a military attack on an aircraft.
“Okay, we have it in our sight. Fire – boom!” Trump says, as a US-flagged destroyer blows one with the Iranian flag out of the sky.
In his latest comments on the war, Trump has dismissed Iran’s latest peace offer as “unacceptable,” while speaking freely about the devastation the US military has already inflicted on Iran — and the targets it spared but could reconsider.
“We hit them unbelievably hard. Look — we left their bridges. We left their electricity capacity. We can knock that all out in two days. Two days — everything,” Trump told Bret Baier, host of Fox News Special Report in an interview that aired Friday night.
Experts told The Post that resumption of the war is a very real possibility.
“I’m sure preparations are underway for more escalation,” said Jon Hoffman, an Iran expert at the Cato Institute.
“Trump has refused to back down from his maximalist demands in negotiations,” he said, while predicting that “Iran won’t negotiate away its leverage.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified to lawmakers this week that the US has an escalation plan in place, if necessary.
“We have a plan to retrograde if necessary. We have a plan to shift assets,”
The New York Times reported Friday there were “intense preparations” underway for a potential resumption of attacks. Those could include “aggressive bombing runs” as soon as next week, the report said, citing Middle East officials.
The White House, the Department of War, and US Central Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
There are about 50,000 US troops in the region along air and naval forces, should President Trump give the order. The USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS George W. Bush aircraft carrier strike groups remain in the region, after the return home Saturday of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Trump has spoken repeatedly about potential US military operations to remove what he calls “nuclear dust” — enriched uranium buried far underground at nuclear sites in Iran that the US has bombed repeatedly.
He revisited the attack during the US-Israeli air campaign that wiped out defenses of Iran’s Kharg Island, cite of a recent oil spill, which is vital to its oil industry.
“We hit Kharg Island, everything but the oil. They wiped out the whole island. Except they left the nozzle, you know that’s where the oil comes out – just in case,” he said. The War Department dispatched 5,000 US Marines to the region in March, which raised the prospects of a ground operation to try to seize it.
Trump has indicated frustration with the talks, which have taken place in Islamabad and through haggling over a 14-point plan. “I am not going to be much more patient. They should make a deal,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Thursday from Beijing. “Now they can make a deal, or they get annihilated,” he said.
He outright dissed Iran’s latest offer in comments to reporters, ripping its “unacceptable sentence, because they have fully agreed no nuclear, and if they have any nuclear of any form, I don’t read the rest.”
Trump says he didn’t ask Chinese President Xi Jinping during their talks this week to push China to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where China gets much of its oil, indicating the US could handle the problem.
“When you ask for favors, you have to do favors in return,” Trump said.
Iran’s parliament security chief Ebrahim Azizi declared in an X post Saturday that Tehran has prepared a plan to “manage traffic” in the Strait of Hormuz — open to allies for a fee, permanently closed to American-linked ships.
Operation Epic Fury lasted 40 days until the announcement of a temporary ceasefire April 8. Trump has said he paused the operation at the urging of Pakistan, who has operated as a mediator.
Trump has repeatedly said the US has sunk Iran’s navy and obliterated its missile and rocket launcher capability. He erupted at a reporter on the flight back from China over reports saying Iran’s arsenal was still intact. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason,” he said.
US Central Command on Thursday disputed reports that Iran has maintained 70% of its missiles and 75% of its rocket launchers, which could leave US allies vulnerable. Adm. Brad Cooper, chief of U.S. Central Command, called the reports “not accurate.”
