American fighter aircraft sit on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of Operation Epic Fury. Photo courtesy United States Department of Defense/Wikimedia Commons.

This past weekend, Trump threatened to escalate the war with Iran by destroying the country’s energy infrastructure, starting, as he said, “with the big one.” The “big one” was almost certainly a veiled reference to Iran’s civilian nuclear plants.

Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant had reportedly been hit with a US missile a few days earlier as a warning. As he announced his plan to destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear infrastructure, Trump further declared that Iran had 48 hours to capitulate before a US attack. Within 24 hours of Trump’s threat, oil prices jumped and stock market futures began to fall.

Before the 48 hours were up, on Monday morning, March 23—an hour before US stock markets opened—Trump announced that Iran had approached him for negotiations. Therefore, he said, the attack would be suspended for five more days, until the end of the week.

The five-day extension had nothing to do with actual negotiations, which Iran stated had never taken place. Trump invented it. The extension was another move by his administration to stabilize US stock markets and oil prices, both of which were set to spike. Within hours of the announcement, US oil prices (WTI) fell $10 a barrel to $90, and stock markets opened higher after a string of declines the previous week.

Since the war began on February 28, Trump and various administration officials have repeatedly claimed that negotiations were occurring, showing progress, or that the war was about to “end soon,” as Trump himself declared. The pattern shows these statements were largely aimed at keeping financial markets from falling too fast and preventing oil prices from surging.

But there’s another explanation for Trump’s about-face and his five-day suspension of the attack on Iran’s nuclear energy infrastructure: he is buying time to position US military forces in the region for a ground assault, to coincide with plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear and civilian energy infrastructure.

Here are some facts suggesting the five-day suspension is really about buying time for a much larger US military buildup.

Mainstream US media have reported that about 2,000 US Marines are en route........

© Canadian Dimension