Trump Warns Iran Of Unprecedented Bombing Campaign If Nuke Deal Not Reached

Sunday saw more threats directed at Iran by President Trump. He told NBC News in a phone interview, “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” This is the most explicit and direct threat yet, after similar rhetoric from the White House last week. Three weeks ago President Trump sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, urging fresh negotiations toward a new nuclear deal. 

In that letter, which the Iranians only much belatedly acknowledged, Trump had issued a two-month deadline for Iran to sign a new deal, warning that if not then Tehran could face military action. Axios and other outlets have highlighted the movement of B-2 stealth bombers in the Indian Ocean, connected with the warnings issued to Iran:

In recent days, the U.S. military sent several B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean in a deployment a U.S. official said was “not disconnected” from Trump’s two-month deadline.

The same report notes, “The B-2 bombers can carry huge bunker buster bombs that would be a key element in any possible military action against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.”

But the Islamic Republic has also long maintained underground ‘missile cities’. The immense size of these underground complexes would make it nearly impossible to take out all of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities without an intense, sustained war.

If a new major war in the Middle East kicked off under the Trump administration, it would become deeply unpopular even among the conservative base. The public is generally war-weary, which is also why Trump is pushing hard for peace in Ukraine.

Any new US bombing campaign in Iran could also complicate US efforts for peace in Ukraine, further as in parallel the US tries to keep the Abraham Accords in the Middle East alive.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has responded to these new Trump threats, saying Sunday that any future diplomatic discussion depends on Washington’s behavior. 

“While Iran’s response rules out the possibility of direct talks between the two sides, it states that the path for indirect negotiations remains open,” he said. “As we have stated before, Iran has never closed the channels of indirect communication. In its response, Iran reaffirmed that it has never shied away from engaging in negotiations, but rather, it has just been the United States’ repeated violations of agreements and commitments that have created problems on this path,” Pezeshkian added.

That’s when the Iranian leader emphasized, “It’s the behavior of the Americans that will determine whether the negotiations can move forward.” Iran has distrusted the Americans ever since Trump pulled out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal in April 2018. Currently Iran is only offering ‘indirect’ talks on the nuclear issue.

Lately the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has described that the Islamic Republic’s current stockpile of 60% enriched uranium – if enriched to 90% – would be enough to produce six nuclear bombs.

Trump has recently brought back ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran, and has even this week advanced the possibility of cracking down on sanctions-busting Iranian oil exports on the high seas, using naval intervention. Clearly this is part of the big stick package of actions meant to push Tehran to the table. And now he’s talking secondary tariffs on Iranian oil as well.

An earlier Fox News interview in February marked the point at which Trump first laid out that Iran has two choices. “Everybody thinks Israel with our help or our approval will go in and bomb the hell out of them,” Trump had said at the time while discussing potential Israeli military action against Tehran.

“I would prefer that not happen. I’d much rather see a deal with Iran where we can do a deal, supervise, check it, inspect it,” the president had emphasized.