Trump Punishes Iran For Killing Two American Troops By Prolonging The War That Killed Them, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Conflict He Has Twice Declared Over Might Actually End

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Vowing to hold Tehran accountable for the deaths of two American service members, President Donald J. Trump this weekend ordered a fresh wave of airstrikes against a country he has personally and repeatedly declared to have already lost a war now entering its fifth month.

U.S. Central Command said the strikes were intended to "swiftly punish" the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the ballistic missile and drone attack that killed the two troops, and left a third missing, at a base in Jordan. The renewed campaign brought to 16 the number of Americans who have died in a conflict the President twice announced was over, most recently in June, when he brokered the ceasefire Iran declared void this month. Explosions were reported Sunday in Bandar Abbas and on Qeshm Island, where U.S. aircraft had already struck several times in the preceding days.

Asked about the fatalities, the first caused by Iranian fire since March, Trump called the deaths "a very sad thing," then added that he "couldn't care less" that Tehran no longer considers itself bound by the interim agreement bearing his signature. Administration officials described the escalation as a measured step to degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a threat that had grown more acute over the several weeks the President spent bombing the waters around it.

The renewed campaign proceeded without a vote of Congress, the branch of government to which the Constitution assigns the power to declare war, and which has now watched the President begin, halt, and restart the same war on his own authority more than once. A source within the administration said the President remained confident the conflict would conclude quickly, as he had announced it would on each prior occasion he declared it concluded.

Officials stressed that the objective of the strikes was to punish Iran for the casualties, casualties that Iran was able to inflict because the strikes were ongoing. The distinction, they said, was important.

At press time, the President was said to be weighing strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, a move analysts cautioned could raise the price of the very oil whose safe passage the bombing was intended to secure.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump, who converts a war he cannot end into a nightly demonstration of resolve and retains sole control over when it starts, stops, and starts again.
§Defense contractors, whose depleted missile inventories were already slated for taxpayer-funded replenishment under emergency wartime authorities invoked earlier in the conflict.
§Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel, who watch the United States absorb the direct military confrontation with Iran.
§Iran's hardliners and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for whom an external bombing campaign is a reliable tool for consolidating power and silencing domestic critics.
§Vladimir Putin and Russia, served by a United States militarily preoccupied in the Gulf and by the higher energy prices that follow instability there.
§Oil and gas producers, whose product grows more valuable every time the Strait of Hormuz is described as endangered.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment