Retired general: Trump would be ‘smart’ to ‘declare victory’ in Iran and ‘go home’

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson said Wednesday that President Trump would be “smart” to “declare victory” in the conflict against Iran and “go home.”

“Well, this war will end whenever Donald Trump says it’s going to end, whenever he decides to declare victory. And if he was smart, he’d declare victory today and go home, because this is not going well. We have a more radicalized regime in place now,” Anderson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.”

“The [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] does not seem to be impacted at all. In fact, they’ve become perhaps even stronger. Sure, they’ve lost a lot of military facilities, they’ve lost a lot of assets, but there’s nothing that they can’t reconstitute quickly,” he added.

On Tuesday, officials from the Pentagon told lawmakers during a briefing that the approximate cost of war against Iran was more than $11.3 billion in the fighting’s first six days, a source told The Hill.

Shipping traffic has been held up in the Strait of Hormuz for close to two weeks during the conflict against Iran, but Trump said Wednesday the strait was in “great shape” in spite of rising concern over the effect of a blockade that lasts.

“We’ve knocked out all of their boats,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “They have some missiles, but not very many. I think we’re in very good…we’re in very good shape.”

Close to a fifth of the world’s oil supply goes through the Strait of Hormuz, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said it won’t let “even a single liter of oil” go through the strait until strikes from the U.S. and Israel stop.

Iran’s new supreme leader, the Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a Thursday morning statement that the strait “must remain closed.”

“American bases in the Middle East must be closed. Iran’s other military and regional capabilities will be activated if necessary,” the statement continued.

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

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