So, we had President Trump Give a Speech on the Iran Conflict...

conditions, calendars, and objectives

After President Trump’s speech Wednesday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reminded everyone of the four goals of Operation Epic Fury.

• Destroy their weapons factories
• Destroy their navy
• Destroy their air force
• Destroy their chances of ever having a nuclear weapon

I start with that for a reason. These stated goals have been consistent throughout the first month of the operation.

That fact can get lost because when he talks about the operation, President Trump is, well, Trumpy in how he communicates. The hyper-partisans on both sides react by throwing a bunch of chaff in the air, making meaningful discussions difficult. We see that in the comments section here on occasion.

You need to maneuver around it. If you want to throw partisan poo from one side or another, I’m really not all that interested in engaging with that.

So, what can we get from last night’s speech?

I am going to pull out some of his quotes in the little under 19-minute speech and will post the full speech at the bottom. If you are looking for where this is going, let’s look at what I consider the meaty bits.

As we do that, remember Rubio’s four points above.

The President started out with a polite nod to the crew of Artemis II. That was nice, but everyone want to shift to Iran, and he pivoted to that rather quickly.

The speech could have stopped at the below. As the President was clearly tired, that may have been best.

…it’s been just one month since the United States military began operation epic fury targeting the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, Iran.

In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive overwhelming victories on the battlefield.

...

Tonight, Iran’s navy is gone. Their air forces in ruins. Their leaders, most of them terrorist regime they led are now dead.

Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak.

…

…tonight, I’m pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.

And we are going to finish the job. And we’re going to finish it very fast. We’re getting very close. I want to thank our allies in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. They’ve been great.

We’re four weeks in and “nearing completion.” Two days near? Two weeks near? Not sure. This looks conditions-based, not calendar-based…so I hope we have achievable Measures of Effectiveness for our Objectives.

Good on him for pointing out who was helping us knock down what really is/was a global threat.

…the countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on. So to those countries that can’t get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves.

I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much. And number two, build up some delayed courage.

Should have done it before. Should have done it with us as we asked. Go to the straight and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. So, it should be easy. And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally. It’ll just open up naturally. They’re going to want to be able to sell oil because that’s all they have to try and rebuild.

It will resume the flowing and the gas prices will rapidly come back down.

That is a bit aspirational, but sends a clear signal that we are not going to expand our mandate. We are not going to invade or occupy anything to force the strait.

That is in line with our stated goals and the nature of a punitive expedition.

I’ve made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly. Very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.

OK, we have our time limit. Two to three weeks. We should wind things down between 14-21 April. I can support that, but not much more. I’d prefer today, but I don’t have all the information they do. I’ll give the Joint Staff and CENTCOM the benefit of the doubt.

That being said, I’m not sure I’m a fan of this.

Yet if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.

We have not hit their oil even though that’s the easiest target of all because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone and there’s not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.

The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust. And we have it under intense satellites surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we’ll hit them with missiles very hard. Again, we have all the cards. They have none.

Part of some negotiation strategy? I have no idea. What I do have an idea about is that there is a very long history of even the most worse autocratic regimes getting support from the most brutalized populations when an outside power starts attacking civilian infrastructure that does not have a clear military purpose. From burning crops a thousand years ago, to the Blitz on London, to burning a Vietnamese village in order to save it…it does not have a very good track record.

Yes, I understand the theory of all the above, but none of that theory played out as expected or created anything but undesired effects for the aggressor.

Executive Summary: we’ll see where we are in three weeks. If in three weeks, someone in the administration is talking about early May, they’ve lost the bubble.