US President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC [Kent Nishimura/AFP
In a week that began with Donald Trump revealing he was just an hour away from “making the decision” to resume attacks on Iran, the United States president has oscillated between expressing hope for a lasting ceasefire and threatening military escalation.
Trump’s mixed messaging has also coincided with a renewed flurry of diplomacy, with Iran as of Thursday saying it had received and was reviewing Washington’s response to Tehran’s latest ceasefire proposal.
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Trump, meanwhile, appeared to indicate an appetite for a third option: a prolonged, grinding conflict.
On Thursday, he reposted a New York Post op-ed by Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank that has long supported military action against Tehran.
The article titled “Here’s how to crush Tehran in three moves,” called on the US to “sustain blockade and accompanying economic warfare”, “remake the world in America’s energy dominance image”, and “order the US military to forge a path through the Strait of Hormuz to restore freedom of navigation on our terms, not Tehran’s”.
The post came after US media widely reported that Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were at loggerheads during a phone call on Tuesday about the future of the Iran war.
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