Only one acts like a juvenile
Our Despot-in-Decline is issuing threat after threat like he’s the Big Bad Orange Wolf. Including threatening to completely “obliterate” Iran’s largest power plants if Iran doesn’t cry “Uncle.” Two can play that game.
From The Guardian:
Iran warns of ‘irreversible damage’ to regional infrastructure if power plants attacked
In a post on X, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be “irreversibly destroyed” if Iranian power plants are attacked. He wrote:
Immediately after the power plants and infrastructure in our country are targeted, the critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be destroyed in an irreversible manner, and the price of oil will remain high for a long time.
The comments come after Donald Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure.
On Saturday evening, the US president wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post.
The comment on the price of oil was a rhetorical missile targeting Donald Trump.
Iran just demonstrated its potential reach with a failed attempt to hit the U.S. base on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean:
Iran’s attempt to strike a US-UK base over 2,000 miles (over 3,000 kilometers) off its coast has renewed questions about Tehran’s military capabilities and how far its missiles can reach.
On Friday morning local time, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, a US official told CNN, adding that neither of them struck the base. This marks what appears to be the first known attempt to target the base, which was deliberately built in a remote location beyond the reach of many adversaries.
While the attack was unsuccessful, it shows that Iran may not be adhering its self-imposed missile range limit of 2,000 kilometers, raising concerns about whether Tehran could hit US and European interests farther away than previously thought.
The New York Times reports that one missile failed mid-flight and an American warship shot down the other. Meanwhile:
Iranian missiles evaded Israel’s formidable air defenses and struck Dimona and the nearby city of Arad, shattering buildings, seriously injuring at least a dozen people and demonstrating that Tehran can still inflict damage even after three weeks of devastating airstrikes from the United States and Israel.
“This is a very difficult evening,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a social media post.
CNN offers a graphic on Iranian missile capabilities:
It’s all a video game to Secretary of WARfighting and his boss (The Hill):
The White House does argue this conflict is to keep the U.S. safe, but instead of strictly adhering to that type of somber tone, the Trump administration is producing AI-generated content, including video game memes channeling “Call of Duty” or “Grand Theft Auto” as its official messaging for the conflict. They’ve even dubbed the war Operation Epic Fury.
“We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude,” a senior White House official told Politico. “There’s an entertainment factor to what we do. But ultimately, it boils down to the fact that no one has ever attempted to communicate with the American public this way before.”
That’s because Americans never allowed emotionally stunted juveniles near the highest perches in the Executive Branch before.