"Here's what Iran sees after being warned not to. They hit UAE and fired on a U.S. ship, and we didn't respond. Instead, we suspended the Strait of Hormuz mission. They take that as weakness. They don't think Trump is willing to bomb them again. They think they have leverage. He needs to prove them wrong."
"So look, first of all, let's stipulate that Donald Trump's decision to do this operation is one of the most courageous things an American president has done in my lifetime. Notably, the U.S. did bomb Iran shortly after the segment aired on Fox. Thiessen continued: No other president—four presidents said Iran can't have a bomb—Donald Trump is the only one who did anything about it."
"But how you start a war and how you finish a war is as important as how you started it. And right now the Iranians are not seeing that Donald Trump has all the cards. They think they have the cards. He started Project Freedom. Said if you fire on a U.S. ship or fire on U.S. allies, I'm gonna blow you off the face of the earth. And they did exactly that—they fired at a U.S. destroyer."
"And then Marco Rubio announced that we're ending Operation Epic Fury, and we're now into Project Freedom. And then the next day we suspended Project Freedom. So what the Iranians see, if you're looking at that from an Iranian perspective, you see weakness. You see that the presid—"
The negotiations to end the conflict in Iran are framed as risking a weaker U.S. position. The view presented is that Iran perceives U.S. actions as inconsistent and therefore as weakness. After Iran fired on a U.S. ship and on allies in the UAE, the U.S. did not respond with force and instead suspended a Strait of Hormuz mission. The sequence of announcements and suspensions is described as reinforcing Iranian beliefs that the U.S. lacks willingness to bomb again. The argument emphasizes that how a war is finished matters as much as how it begins, and that Trump must prove deterrence to shift Iranian perceptions.
#us-iran-negotiations #presidential-foreign-policy #deterrence-and-military-response #middle-east-conflict #strait-of-hormuz
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