Rouhani had said: “America should know that war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” The learned analysts are in an uproar today over Trump’s “provocative” language — as if the Iranian mullahs weren’t already provoked. They have been indulging in threatening and saber-rattling rhetoric against the United States for years. The political and media elites seem to take that for granted as legitimate, but woe betide an American President who dares to answer back in terms just as strong.
In reality, the mullahs respect only strength, and despise weakness. This course of action is far more likely to bring them to the table and end their global adventurism than the Obama/Kerry path of appeasement and accommodation.
“Trump tweets explosive threat to Iran,” by Joshua Berlinger, CNN, July 23, 2018:
(CNN)President Donald Trump issued a furious, all-caps challenge to the Iranian regime late Sunday night, warning that any threats to the US would be met with unspecified dire consequences.
The tirade signaled an immediate escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran, and capped a weekend of angry tweets by the President on the Russia investigation and the legal problems facing his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen….
To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018
Trump’s comments were apparently a response to earlier remarks by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who warned the US that war with Tehran would be the “mother of all wars.”
Rouhani warned Trump not to “play with the lion’s tail, because you will regret it eternally.” He also held out the possibility of a peaceful relationship with the US, in remarks reported by Iranian state media.
On Monday, a senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Commander General Gholam Hossein Gheibparvar, described Trump’s remarks as “psychological warfare,” the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
Even before Trump’s tweet, his administration had already intensified the rhetoric against the regime.
In a blistering speech earlier Sunday evening, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo likened the Iranian regime to the mafia, accusing the clerics that rule the country of enriching themselves and funding terrorism at the expense of ordinary Iranians.
“To the regime, prosperity, security, and freedom for the Iranian people are acceptable casualties in the march to fulfill the Revolution,” Pompeo said in remarks delivered at the Ronald Reagan National Library in Simi Valley, California.
“The level of corruption and wealth among regime leaders shows that Iran is run by something that resembles the mafia more than a government.”
Among the most startling allegations leveled by Pompeo, who was CIA director before becoming secretary of state, was that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has a personal hedge fund worth $95 billion….