The American military attacked Iran for a second night in a row, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said that negotiating with Iran regime leaders was “just a waste of time” and called the Iranians “liars,” “scum” and “sick people.”
“If they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it,” Trump said earlier in the day. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”
U.S. Central Command said that Trump ordered the additional strikes to “further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” CENTCOM said.
Trump shared video footage on Wednesday of loud booms, explosions and fire coming out of a building, including apparently at Iran’s Chabahar Port, and stated that “this is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran.”
“If it happens again, it will get much worse,” he said.
Iran has reportedly said that it plans to respond.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military said that it hit more than 80 targets in Iran with “precision munitions as an immediate response to Iran’s latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
“U.S. forces struck Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international commerce flowing through the international trade corridor,” CENTCOM said at the time.
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, CENTCOM said that more than 20 U.S. naval warships were “patrolling waters across the Middle East, as CENTCOM forces continue promoting regional security and stability.”
