Summary
- Trump orders major strikes on Iran, likely to start this weekend.
- US adds sanctions, Bessent says Tehran can't pay troops, as Iran faces growing pressure.
- Most Americans say the Iran war isn't worth fighting: AP poll.
- Iran claims drone strike on US base in Kuwait - after no new US strikes overnight.
- Oil rises as fears of wider conflict grow and lack of talks.
* * *
Trump Orders Major Weekend Strikes
The Wall Street Journal and CBS are reporting that major US strikes - perhaps harder than anything of the last two weeks - are set to imminently commence. The attacks could be initiated at any point this weekend, after Trump gave the 'order' - it's being reported:
President Trump has ordered a fresh attack on Iran aimed at getting Tehran to surrender that could begin as soon as this weekend and would last a few days, U.S. officials said.
Earlier on Friday, he told reporters that he planned to resume heavy military strikes to force the regime to come to the negotiating table. He predicted that if the U.S. hit Iran hard enough, the hard-line regime would eventually “peter out.”
Trump made clear earlier at Camp David that the Iranians can't be trusted, are 'dishonorable' - and so he's not pursuing talks.
The late afternoon Friday CBS report is more alarming, given that "The United States and Israel are planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, with strikes possible throughout the weekend."
It adds, "There was some discussion about trying to conclude by the time financial markets open Monday because of concern about how the bombings will affect the U.S. and global economy, but an end point wasn't locked in."
Earlier this week there were reports of Trump exploding at his own advisors amid ongoing debates about how the crisis should be handled, or else and exit strategy.
"Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often," Trump said Friday at Camp David, putting his frustration on display later adding: "All they do is make me angry."
Keep Hitting Them: Trump
Trump is holding a Cabinet meeting on Friday at Camp David. He claimed that the fight against Iran is "going well" and stated that American forces are "hitting them very hard" - adding that "eventually" Iran will have no choice but to "come home" - meaning full surrender.
"It’s going well. Everything we can do is keep winning," Trump also told Fox News. "But we are hitting them hard, shaking them up, and we’re just continuing to win." He suggested there will still be strikes ongoing in coming weeks, and that he's losing faith in the idea of talks with "dishonest" Iran "because they lie".
Additionally, Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is claiming that Iran is unable to pay its troops - though without offering specific evidence to back this, and that the US continues searching for Iranian assets to seize "all around the world". This is after Thursday Washington rolled out yet more sanctions.
In the meantime, the American public continues souring on the Iran war, which has predictably turned into yet another quagmire in the Middle East. Per a new Associated Press poll:
Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, and President Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
The results are a stark repudiation of the Republican president’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults say the war with Iran, which began Feb. 28, has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.
Iran Boasts it Hit Kuwait Base
"We note with concern that the security situation remains precarious," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi on his country's mediation efforts to find peace between the US and Iran. Talks "are ongoing to normalize the situation, particularly the situation in the Strait of Hormuz," he told reporters as a week full of renewed fighting as come to a close. But there essentially are no current talks, and US officials have indicated they are not even seeking them.
Early Thursday had seen the last major exchanges of tit-for-tat attacks, followed by a window of relative quiet into Friday - but the Iranian military has said it newly targeted strategic US military facilities at Kuwait’s Ahmad Al-Jaber airbase in a drone attack. This was cast as 'retaliation' for US attacks of the day prior which focused on Qeshm island. Several Iranian troops had been killed in the prior assault, and separately a family was slain when their home was reportedly hit.
Semiofficial Tasnim news agency said the armed forces had targeted hangars, satellite communication systems and equipment warehouses using drones - based on the military statement.
No New US Strikes Overnight
"Iranian state media reported the strike on Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base early Friday, but Kuwaiti officials and the Pentagon have yet to comment," Newsnation summarizes, adding of the current standstill in fighting, "Notably, Iranian media did not report any American strikes hitting targets inside Iran overnight, a change from Wednesday, when the U.S. carried out what officials called a heavy wave of strikes against Iranian positions."
The day prior saw the Iranians heavily target an American outpost in Jordan. Iran believes the US is amassing equipment there in preparation for further rounds of attacks. As for the Friday targeting of Kuwait: "Iran cited a U.S. strike that killed a mother, father and their 2-year-old child in a home on Qeshm Island as part of its justification for the reported Kuwait attack."
'Horizontal Escalation'
On the question of where the crisis goes from here, a Tehran-based researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies, Ali Akbar Dareini, gave Al Jazeera some interesting insight into Tehran's likely thinking:
He said Iran is likely trying to preempt any future attacks by the US in its current targeting in the region. Iran does not want to “allow the US to decide when to start the war, when to pause temporarily and when to restart the war”, he added. “Iran is now targeting the staging grounds of future operations.”
Dareini explained that while Washington has been pursuing “vertical escalation” by ramping up military attacks against Iran, Tehran has sought “horizontal escalation” by expanding the conflict’s “geographical scope”.
“Iran wants a complete, permanent end to war, or it’s going to be a wide-scale regional war,” he said.
As for the latest on potential US-Israeli plans to escalate against the Islamic Republic...
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has claimed its forces struck a pair of tankers attempting to pass though the narrow waterway under the "air escort" of the US military.
The IRGC asserted that the "non-compliant oil tankers… were struck and brought to a halt, while four other oil tankers quickly changed course and returned to their previous positions." Meanwhile, two headlines that don't line up:
- US President Trump says the Iran war is going well; US is hitting Iran hard and "we just keep winning" (Fox)
- The Persian Gulf Waterway Management Authority announces that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is not possible due to the continued aggressive actions of the US
Oil Climbs with No Offramp on Horizon
Still, despite of a lack of intense tit-for-tat so far on Friday, oil is rebounding significantly as there are no signs of offramp and the two sides aren't talking - but instead preparing for more rounds in the fight...
But this Friday's somewhat 'quiet' state of things could likely dramatically shift at any moment, as has been the pattern this summer. The aforementioned Tehran-based analyst Dareini describes a serious change and overhaul in Iranian leaders' strategic thinking, which has gone from defensive to proactive, with an understanding of the need to inflict pain on the US side in a preemptive way.
"Iranians are tired from suffering from limited US attacks," Dareini said, charging that the US uses its declared pauses as a "deception tactic" merely in preparation for future attacks and operations.
"There has been a profound change in Iran’s strategic thinking," he added. "The era of restraint is over. Iran has decided that, if needed, it has to take preemptive military action against the US."
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