Trump blustered on for 28 minutes last night, lying and bragging as usual. Hidden within that speech were hints of his war aims, a denial that the aims had failed (which they did) and further hints of his plans. Some listeners may dismiss those hints as being just Trump’s usual bluster , such as when he said he would bomb Iran “back to the stone ages” (sic). More ominous, though, is the fact that the Wall St. Journal did not attempt to clarify the war aims or plans.

Trump gave a hint of his original plan when 250 words into his speech he thanked the US troops “for the masterful job they did in taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes.” That was his vision – Venezuela writ large. Not kidnap Khameini but kill him, and the rest of the government would fall in line. Once that didn’t work out, then he, Hegseth and the mad bombers in Israel figured they’d just have to go to the next level.

Trump bragged about a lot of things. “We’ve beaten and completely decimated Iran…. We are unstoppable as a military force,” he said. He bragged about how great the US economy is. As for his aims: “Regime change was not our goal,” he lied. Then he turned around and pretended that goal had been accomplished: “Regime change has occurred because of all their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical….” Just the opposite is the case, and even Trump recognized it in his very next sentence: “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…” One problem is that one of Iran’s key electric generating plants is the nuclear powered Bushehr plant. If the lunatics who run the US war department strike that plant, it could have the same longer term effect as dropping a nuclear bomb, and not even Trump’s allies in the region would be pleased with that.

The WSJ editorial comment.
What they didn’t say was every bit as ominous as what Trump did say.

The next day the Wall St. Journal editors wrote an editorial entitled Trump Says He Will Finish the Job in Iran. They expressed relief. “All told Mr. Trump delivered an effective speech, with a persuasive message that should win him enough time to keep up his campaign to achieve all of his war aims. Now let’s hope he sticks to that message long enough for it to sink in with the many audiences he was trying to reach, at home and abroad,” they concluded.

The WSJ editorial board is not given to hyperbole or bluster, but neither do they want to clarify exactly where this is headed.

William Galston, a regular columnist for the WSJ, hinted what’s in store in his column. He concluded: “As the Journal reports, Mr. Trump is considering a declaration of victory soon and a drawdown of American forces. But no such declaration will be credible as long as Iran remains in effective control of the strait. Seizing Kharg Island probably won’t be enough to break Iran’s grip on the waterway… A much larger operation would be necessary, seizing multiple islands in the strait and dealing with a range of Iranian threats from the shoreline. Protecting shipping… means controlling the ‘whole shoreline, its people and the airspace above it.’ Even with the ground forces now on their way to the region, we probably wouldn’t have enough troops to do this. It would still take more.

“The prospects for negotiations reopening the strait and ending the war are dismal, and there is no guarantee that force can accomplish what diplomacy cannot. The U.S. is in no position, militarily or politically, to mount the kind of all-out invasion of Iran that brought down Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But anything less will probably allow the Iranian regime to survive, which it will trumpet as a victory against the Great Satan.

“Mr. Trump faces difficult choices. If the war ends with Iran still in control of the strait, the U.S. will have suffered a strategic defeat. But if the limited ground operations that the president is now considering don’t succeed, he may well have to choose between this defeat and escalation, which could lead to something even worse.”

And there you have it. The US can no longer overthrow a regime without an all-out invasion. In the past, the US could – for instance the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. There, the US helped engineer a coup. It’s a symptom of the weakening of US imperialism that they can’t find sufficient forces on the ground to do their dirty work for them anymore. As our previous article on the war showed, Trump’s policies have only driven the Iran regime into an even more determined opposition to US/Israeli domination of the region. Now, Trump and company cannot overthrow it through supporters inside Iran. Nor can that be done by bombing from the skies, no matter how many bombs they drop. They can only accommplish it through a large scale ground invasion and that would lead to massive opposition at home.

So, Trump blunders on. He hides his aims in plain sight by blustering so much that few take what he says seriously. The WSJ editors simply don’t even hint at it.

The latest opinion poll shows that by a 66% to 41% majority, most people in the US disapprove of Trump’s war in Iran. The approval rating is down from 41% less than a month ago. The reason for the fall is the rise in the price of gas at home. In other words, war crimes and barbarity meted out against the people of Iran don’t matter. All that matters is the squeeze on people’s pocket books.

Workers in the U.S. should beware: Galston referred vaguely to the possibility of Trump doing “something even worse.” Galston doesn’t try to define what “something even worse” is, but let’s be clear: It means the US and Israel doing to Iran what Israel did to Gaza. In fact, even the use of a nuclear bomb cannot be ruled out! That is the barbarism of which Trump and Netanyahu are capable.

Trump is not alone in his inability to see beyond the tip of his nose. For 80 years now, every force of US society has encouraged the same thinking. Every force has encouraged the narrow “think only of yourself” approach. That includes the leadership of the US working class – the union leadership. So, of course it has had an effect. But now, workers must ask themselves whether the barbaric cruelty that Trump has unleashed on the people of Iran will stop there? We have already seen hints of his capacity in his ICE raids. Just as foreign policy is the expression of domestic policy, so the reverse is true: The barbarity Trump is planning for Iran are a further warning on what he plans to unleash on the US working class in the future. That is the lesson of Minneapolis… and the lesson of Tehran.