Amid talk that war with Iran may be renewed, President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated Truth Social video that showed him seemingly ordering the destruction of an Iranian naval vessel.
“OK we have it in our sight. Fire – boom!” Trump says in the video as a U.S. destroyer blows an Iranian aircraft out of the sky.
“I’m sure preparations are underway for more escalation,” said Jon Hoffman, a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, said, according to the New York Post, which said “intense preparations” are under way to resume fighting.
“Trump has refused to back down from his maximalist demands in negotiations,” he said, while predicting that “Iran won’t negotiate away its leverage.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said an escalation plan is in place, if it is needed.
A report in The New York Times said the plans are ready if Trump wants to hit Iran once again.
Trump said after leaving China that Iran’s latest offer was not what he wanted.
“I looked at it, and if I don’t like the first sentence I just throw it away,” he said.
Two Middle East officials also told the Times that the United States and Israel are preparing for a resumption of hostilities.
“They’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated,” the president said Tuesday. “So, one way or another, we win.”
Iranian military and infrastructure targets would be hit in any new campaign, the Times quoted what it said were U.S. officials it did not name.
There is also the chance that Special Operations troops would be landed in Iran to ensure that nuclear material buried deep underground is not accessed by Iran.
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel last week that Pentagon leaders “retain and continue to hold a range of options for our civilian leaders.”
On May 5, Caine said more than 50,000 troops, two aircraft carriers, a dozen or more Navy destroyers, and scores of warplanes “remain ready to resume major combat operations against Iran if ordered to do so. No adversary should mistake our current restraint with a lack of resolve.”
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