By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
I’m going to choose to be an optimist and believe that
the contradictory statements from administration officials are a deliberate,
brilliant strategy to ensure the remaining leaders in the Iranian regime have
no idea what the U.S. actually wants to do or intends to do.
A post on X from the U.S. Department of Defense, 2:25
p.m. Eastern, Sunday afternoon: “We have only just begun to fight.”
President Trump, Monday afternoon, in an article on CBSNews.com posted at 4:58 p.m. Eastern:
“I think the war is very
complete, pretty much,” the president said, speaking from his Doral, Florida,
golf club.
“[Iran has] no navy, no
communications, they’ve got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter.
Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their
manufacturing of drones. . . . If you look, they have nothing left. There’s
nothing left in a military sense. . . . We’re very far ahead of schedule.”
At 4:35 p.m. Eastern, Trump addressed House GOP
members at their Issues Conference in Florida and said, “We’ve
already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough. We go forward more
determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long
running danger once and for all. . . . We will not relent until the enemy is
totally and decisively defeated.”
The term “totally and decisively defeated” sounds more
like Trump’s Friday morning declaration on Truth Social that the only
acceptable end to the war is Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” But later that day, the president told Axios, “Unconditional surrender could
be that [the Iranians] announce it. But it could also be when they can’t fight
any longer because they don’t have anyone or anything to fight with.”
Shortly after the interview with CBS was published,
President Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. There, he again made
it sound like the military operations against Iran could wind down soon:
While we’re doing all of these
things, we’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective.
And some people could say they’re pretty well complete. We’ve wiped every
single force in Iran out, very completely. Most of Iran’s naval power has been
sunk.
But a few moments later, the president added:
We’ve struck over 5,000 targets
to date, some of them very major targets and we’ve left some of the most
important targets for later in case we need to do it.
The president did not elaborate on why “some of the most
important targets” have been “left for later.” When the president took
questions, he said the war would end “very soon,” but not this week:
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. On
Iran, you called it an excursion. You said it would be over soon. Are you
thinking this week it will be over? Are you talking about days?
President Trump: No. But I think
soon. Very soon. Look, everything they have is gone, including their
leadership. In fact, there are two levels of leadership and even actually, as
it turns out more than that, but two levels of leadership are gone. Most people
have never even heard about the leaders that they’re talking about. So it’s
obviously been very — very powerful, very effective.
But Trump said that if Iran kept up its attacks on ships
in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, U.S. forces would hit Iran “at a
much, much harder level”:
I will not allow a terrorist
regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe’s oil supply.
And if Iran does anything to do that, they’ll get hit at a much, much harder
level. . . . So, the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe. We have a lot of
Navy ships there. We have the best equipment in the world, inspecting for
mines. Again, most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea, but we
will, uh, we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or
anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world.
U.S. Central Command said that American forces have
struck more than 5,000 targets in Iran since the war began,
indisputably an incredible pace of sorties, and probably a near-unprecedented
display of military might.
But the Iranian ability to strike targets in other
countries remains degraded, not eliminated. From the Associated Press:
Sirens warned of incoming
missiles in the futuristic business hub of Dubai, and in Bahrain, authorities
said an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, killing a
29-year-old woman and wounding eight others. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed two
drones over its oil-rich eastern region and Kuwait’s National Guard said it
shot down six drones.
Later in the morning, sirens also
sounded in Jerusalem and sounds of explosions could be heard in Tel Aviv as
Israel’s defense systems worked to intercept incoming fire, not long after the
military said it detected an Iranian missile launch.
“We are definitely not looking
for a ceasefire,” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, wrote on
X. “We believe that the aggressor should be punched in the mouth so that he
learns a lesson so that he will never think of attacking our beloved Iran
again.”
At another point in yesterday’s press conference, Trump
emphasized how the U.S. military operation is benefiting China:
I mean, we’re doing this for the
other parts of the world, including countries like China. They get a lot of
their oil through the straits. So, we’re doing this. We have a very good
relationship with President Xi and China. I’m going there in a short period of
time. And we’re protecting the world from what these lunatics are trying to do,
and very successfully, I might add.
So, just to clarify, the president who ran on “America
first” and ending “forever wars,” and who once said “we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” is
emphasizing how much his directed military intervention is helping protect
Beijing’s access to oil.
As mentioned yesterday, at least a few Chinese ships — or at least ships claiming to be Chinese — have passed
through the Strait of Hormuz unmolested since the conflict began:
But by claiming to have an
“all-Chinese crew” aboard, or changing their destination to “Chinese owner”,
vessels are linking themselves to Iran’s most important economic partner,
Beijing.
“These appear to be precautionary
signals used by ships attempting to reduce the risk of being targeted,”
according to Ana Subasic, trade risk analyst at Kpler, which owns Marine
Traffic.
That “does not always signal
direct Chinese ownership,” she told AFP.
On Monday, Panama-flagged cargo
ship Guan Yuan Fu Xing was the latest to make it safely through the Strait of
Hormuz, two days after changing its destination to “CHINA OWNER” via its AIS
transponder. . . .
The Iron Maiden, registered in
the Marshall Islands, and the Liberia-flagged Sino Ocean, brandished China
links while sailing through the strait, then removed them once they were out.
Others broadcast similar
messages, sometimes for only a few minutes, while stationary.
At least two ships have broadcast
signals indicating Turkish ownership and crew members, or in one case the day
the war broke out, declaring itself “Muslim”.
But despite those efforts to identify as Chinese ships,
very few ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the maritime news site Windward:
Traffic through the Strait of
Hormuz fell to its lowest level of the conflict, with only two outbound
Iranian-flagged vessels recorded and no inbound crossings.
Evidence suggests that at least
one tanker may have completed a dark transit through the Strait, reappearing
after several days with AIS disabled.
Oil prices came down from the peak of their spike on
Monday, leading some of the usual suspects to scoff that the concern about gas
prices had been an overreaction from “panicans.” But the price per barrel of crude
oil and Brent is still way higher than in mid-to-late
February, as are heating oil and gasoline.
(More on gas prices in a moment.)
Call it a panic if you want, but the people who make their living shipping and selling oil
sure sound genuinely concerned:
The Iran war threatens
“catastrophic consequences” for the global oil market, the CEO of Saudi oil
giant Aramco has warned.
Amin Nasser told an earnings call
on Tuesday that the war had caused “a severe chain reaction” and “a drastic
domino effect” beyond shipping, “on aviation, agriculture, automotive, and
other industries.”
“There will be catastrophic
consequences for the world’s oil market. The longer the disruption goes on and
the more drastic the consequences for the global economy,” he said, adding that
it was “by far the biggest crisis” faced by the region’s oil and gas industry.
Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery was
hit by a projectile last week, amid widespread Iranian drone and missile
attacks on the Gulf states in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes on it.
Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, appeared on
CNBC International yesterday:
As long as the situation is
insecure, I think all tankers, all maritime navigation must be very careful.
Again, this doesn’t mean that we want to harm the tankers, we want to target
the tankers, not. The situation is because of the aggressions by the United
States and Israel. . . .
As I said, we are not responsible
for this situation. Come on. Did we start this war? Don’t you agree with me
that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is all because of this war? And if
you agree with me, this war was not started by Iran. They started this war. The
United States and Israel and all those countries that are helping the
aggressors through giving them territory, giving them logistics, giving them
their assets and installations.
If you’re looking to measure the political fallout, I
would keep my eyes on the prices at the local gas station. Yesterday morning,
the average national price according
to AAA was $3.47; this morning, it is $3.53.
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