Trump Team Gets Ready to “Slap” Iran Around as Ceasefire Crumbles

Donald Trump is going all in on the Iran war again.

The Trump administration is not looking to wind down the violence in the Iran war anytime soon.

The current escalation could last a day or a month, depending on whether Iran attacks more commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, according to unnamed U.S. officials who spoke with Axios Thursday. But the brutality and bloodshed aren’t expected to simmer down in the meantime.

“We’re going to slap them a bit so they understand we’re not fucking around,” one American official told Axios’s Barak Ravid.

The dissolution of the ceasefire reportedly stems from frustration inside Iran’s theocratic regime, with more radical components of Tehran’s leadership unconvinced that the previously arranged peace deal would benefit their nation.

U.S. officials told Axios that Iran saw its grip over the strait slipping as ships began to travel through the waterway’s southern route, closer to the Omani coast. The economic incentives of the memorandum had also lost their allure for Tehran as the country found it remarkably difficult to sell oil even after the U.S. lifted economic sanctions. Financial institutions and countries were reluctant to participate in trade that was based on temporary waivers.

Iranian officials were also reportedly vexed that the billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets held in international accounts had not yet been unfrozen, despite stipulations requiring that Iran first meet nuclear thresholds as required by the memorandum of understanding.

“Part of the Iranian leadership was not happy about all of those things,” a U.S. official told Axios. “They started shooting and we decided it’s time to slap them back hard. It’s a process. We have patience. If we don’t feel we’re getting the deal we want, we are not going to do it.”

It is not clear exactly how long the current flare-up will last, but Donald Trump signaled Wednesday that he would no longer be willing to negotiate with Tehran’s leadership, suggesting that—despite having been president from 2017 to 2021 and, during that period, dismantling the previous Iran nuclear deal—he had only just now started to understand Iran’s theocracy.

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum,” Trump told reporters at a NATO summit presser in Ankara, Turkey. When asked what had changed since the MOU was preemptively signed last month, Trump said: “I got to know ’em.”

Also at the NATO summit, Trump openly pitched the idea of committing war crimes against Iran, claiming that the U.S. could “knock down every single bridge in Iran” in a single day.

“There’s not a thing they can do about it,” Trump said, seated feet away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “If we have to, we’ll take them out. I don’t want to do that. They have desalinization plants, we’ll take them out if we have to.… Maybe we’ll take over Kharg island. We may take over Kharg Island, there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

Epstein Survivors Say His Assistant Lied to Congress

Several victims of Jeffrey Epstein say his former assistant is lying about her role in his abuse.

Multiple victims of billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are accusing his assistant of lying to Congress.

Several Epstein survivors, including four who spoke publicly and two others who did so anonymously, told CNN that Lesley Groff’s assertions last month were outright false. Groff testified before the House Oversight Committee on June 9 and claimed that she never met any of the girls and young women who gave Epstein massages and did not........

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