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Trump Finally Tapped Out After Dealing With the Iranian Regime – HotAir

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May 11, 2026
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U.S. Releases Video of Marines Seizing Iranian Ship – PJ Media

It’s no longer a question of whether Donald Trump will resume kinetic action against the remnants of the IRGC holding onto power in Iran by their fingernails. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, Washington time, the question of it moved into the realm of when and to what level of intensity.

I’ve always understood why President Trump sought a deal, or more accurately, terms of surrender during this ceasefire period transitioning from Operation Epic Fury to Operation Epic Freedom. After a nearly flawless six weeks of intense aerial and naval bombing in coordination with the Israelis, the long list of targets to hit had been mostly checked off. Many had been rechecked for good measure in subsequent strikes. When you get to the next level of potential elements inside Iran to further weaken the regime, it adds the weight of also directly or indirectly harming the civilian population as well. And that prospect is something that gives the President pause.

Even though Donald Trump is regarded by the progressive left in the U.S. as the second coming of Hitler, and in some quarters, the actual antichrist, Donald Trump still sees a future for Iran – one free of the terrorist regime at their weakest state after nearly half a century in power, and he really doesn’t want to cause wholesale death and destruction against people that only yearn for freedom. 

But this is where the remnants of the rump regime miscalculate President Trump yet again. He does not want to act and finish the job. That’s very different than whether he’s willing to do so if the situation warrants it. 

A week ago on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Trump was asked a throwaway question at the very end of the interview about whether he prefers to go for the green in two on a par 5 if he’s hit a good drive, or whether he lays up and takes the easy birdie. After talking about his golf game, something he very much enjoys, Hugh encouraged him to go for the green in two vis-à-vis Iran. Hit them hard, and quit trying to negotiate a deal by which they’ll never abide. Here was Trump’s response. 





HH: Don’t take the wedge on Iran, Mr. President. Hit for the green. Go for the green on Iran. 

DT: Well, I know how you feel, and I think you’re going to be extremely happy when it all ends. And it shouldn’t be that long. We’re trying to be nice. But I know exactly, and some very, very smart people feel that you’re right about that. 

HH: Well, it’s the most important thing you’ve done in your two terms. 

DT: And these are very unreliable people if you make a deal. You know? 

HH: Yeah, it’s the most important thing you’ve done in two terms, and I applaud it. I hope you just see it through. 

DT: Well, somebody should have done it long before I got here. 

HH: Yes. 

DT: 47 years of this stuff, whether the USS Cole or you could mention 100 different things. And thousands and thousands of American lives, and thousands of kids are walking around, now they’re no longer kids, without arms, without legs, with a face that got blown to pieces because of Soleimani, who I killed. I killed Soleimani. 

HH: Yup. 

DT: That was another big one. I did a lot, Hugh. I did a lot. 

HH: Keep it going, Mr. President, because it’s the number one thing. 

DT: I will.

If you go back and listen to that line, there is a tone of resignation in Trump’s voice when talking about the unreliability of the fools with whom he’s negotiating. The President wants to save Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He doesn’t want to preserve the regime, but just the ability for the next iteration of what life and governance in Iran looks like to be able to have a country that can recover and prosper. The regime only wants to stay in power. As to the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to maintain power, they’re really no different than American Democrats. 

Several other pressure points increased last week, bringing us to the stage where offensive war is not just probable once again, but imminent. 

Operation Economic Fury has delivered everything for which it was designed and then some. 

Iran cannot move oil to anyone willing to pay for it. They cannot import grain or other non-native food. By Sunday afternoon, the number of Iranian ships interdicted had climbed to 70.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz gave more details on the chokehold Economic Fury is having on the Iranian economy. 





While the conditions in Iran are much worse now due to Operation Economic Fury than the conditions that when the Shah fell in 1979, causing the wrong revolution to break out in Tehran, the Islamic regime still stands. But the fractures and cracks are now big enough to be literally picked up on satellite. Even slowing down the flow of oil from the fields in Khuzestan Province to Kharg Island, and by using anything floating or otherwise that might hold oil in order to stall for time before having to cap the wells at their source, there are signs that an ecological disaster might be underway. It appears there are at least three large oil slicks in the Persian Gulf that weren’t there a week ago. 

There are two theories developing as the most likely cause. Neither of them is great news for Iran. One is that the regime is flat-out dumping oil into the Gulf because there’s nowhere else to put it, and they don’t want to sabotage the wells on the other side of the pipeline. The second is that some of the decommissioned tankers that were hastily re-commissioned as floating storage tanks are leaking. 

The IRGC, as well as the Basij forces, can no longer pay their soldiers. At several checkpoints, boys and girls as young as 12 are now armed and thrown into uniforms. And since the IRGC can’t offer a nice salary as a signing bonus to new adult recruits, how about a child bride instead? 

Regime clerics are hiding in hospitals, IRGC command centers are set up in elementary schools, and now they’re dragooning 9-year-old girls to become sex slaves as an enticement of what allegedly awaits them in paradise when they get whacked by air strikes in the days and weeks ahead. It’s as evil a regime as there is on Earth. 

By the way, there is an unexpected beneficiary of the conflict in the Gulf – the Panama Canal.

I seem to recall an American president making a pretty big to-do last year during the first month of his term about the unacceptability of the CCP essentially owning both ends of the Canal. The President said we could and would no longer tolerate it, and if necessary, would reclaim the Panama Canal. In very short order, well before any of this current activity in the Gulf began, Donald Trump exerted enough pressure to get the Chinese to divest themselves from control of the Canal. In retrospect, that looks like a pretty 4-D chess move. China would be much less inclined to pressure Iran if it were getting a bonus 15% of increased traffic through the Canal.   

Project Freedom is another element that developed last week, although it was scuttled before it really had a chance to make a long-term impact. For the 36 hours it was in effect, however, nearly 80 tankers and cargo ships not Iranian-flagged traversed the Strait. Three U.S. destroyers were used as bait; the regime bit, surging fast-attack boats, missiles, and drones. Not only were the attacks unsuccessful, but they provided target practice for U.S. forces to sink the boats and destroy everything Iran flew and the locations from which they flew them. 

The fly in the ointment of Project Freedom was that a couple of Iranian drones and missiles did strike Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates infrastructure, and a Chinese-flagged tanker docked in a U.A.E. port, and they were most upset that Donald Trump downplayed it, saying it didn’t rise to the level of violating the ceasefire. After pausing Project Freedom to iron out the disagreement with our Arab allies, Qeshm Island and the southern shore of Iran got a geographical makeover on Friday, courtesy of the United States. The Arab allies are not going to be patient much longer, and neither is Donald Trump. 





Around the middle of last week, the President presented his latest proposal to the Iranian regime, which looked remarkably similar to the previous proposals, because, as former Missouri Senator Jim Talent told me on my Duane’s World podcast last Tuesday, there’s no reason for President Trump to split the pot when he’s holding four aces. Trump said Iran had a week to respond and accept the final offer, with the deadline coinciding with the President’s trip to Beijing Wednesday and Thursday for direct meetings with Secretary-General Xi Jinping. 

The Chinese angle has been interesting to watch in that publicly, they’ve at least given lip service to support for their Iranian gas station attendants. But privately, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned there would be secondary sanctions against any entity that tried to run the blockade and trade in illicit Iranian oil, the CCP ordered its national banks to quit funding five different refineries that had been converting Iranian oil to gasoline. China appears to be recalibrating how hard they want to press the issue in the Persian Gulf, and expect that to be discussed face-to-face when Donald Trump arrives.

And after the President and his foreign policy team brokered a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, largely so that Russia would not be embarrassed by the very real possibility of their annual May Day parade being struck by a swarm of Ukrainian drones, Trump seemed to have a little leverage to play with Mr. Putin as well. 

Ambassador Flynn and the State Department are working with the United Nations Security Council for a resolution to recognize the Strait of Hormuz as an international waterway and order Iran to cease hostile activities there. It would otherwise be an easy vote for the Security Council, except for the expected vetoes from the Chinese and Russians. Trump may have gotten Russia to pocket their veto by pulling back on Ukraine’s reins a bit, and the trip to see Xi Jinping this week might have something to do with assuring they won’t interfere, either. 

The UN vote isn’t all that important, other than if passed without Iran’s expected allies blocking and tackling for them, Iran will be totally isolated, and any resumption of kinetic action will have at least the veneer of support from the international community.  

All this takes us to what happened Sunday. Rump regime remnants, which really ought to be the name of a rock band, upped the ante. They now believe themselves to be the world’s fourth superpower, apparently. 

It’s laughable, but unless we show them how laughable it is by killing them as dead as last week’s leftovers, Iran’s rhetoric is going to stick with anti-American and anti-Israel forces globally. But what really raised the stakes for imminent strikes was this move. 





I do not believe for a second they have the capacity to pull a stunt like this off, but if they deploy Flipper and his mines to blow up these fiber optic cables, that’s not going to be cool. 

This is not going to be allowed. Not now, not ever. The intensity of the boom coming to Iran will increase exponentially in relation to the proximity Iran gets to those cables. 

Keep in mind, the Iranians had until mid-week to accept Trump’s terms. They didn’t need that long. Donald Trump, seemingly responding to the Iranian response before it became public, took to social media. 

Within an hour, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short an event at the Red Sea to return to Jerusalem for a long call with the President. 

Iran’s response, such that it is, did go public very soon after. 

Donald Trump was not amused. 

Will the China summit still take place? For now, yes. Secretary Bessent is going to Japan today ahead of Trump and will meet him in Beijing on Wednesday night. They’re expected to be there for two days before returning to Washington. If that trip gets postponed, you’ll know the cause for it by what goes up in smoke in Iran. 

There were reports Sunday afternoon of anti-aircraft and air defense systems engaged in Kuzestan Province. Again, that’s of significance because that’s where the oil fields are. The Iranians claim to have downed a reconnaissance drone, though there’s been nothing released from Centcom to confirm that, and the regime has lied about virtually everything in this conflict as propaganda. 

Showing they’re taking the sublime into the arena of the ridiculous, the regime, after rejecting Trump’s proposal and countering with their own, only to have Trump reject that, rejected Trump’s rejection of their rejection of Trump’s rejection that they’re going to ever become a nuclear power or control the Strait. 





 
So if we’re now talking about when strikes are renewed and what they might look like, here’s one indication. 

If the administration is talking about suspending the $.184 per gallon gas tax, they’re expecting to dig in and have at it with the regime for a while. Suspending the gasoline tax doesn’t portend that one set of terminal strikes is coming. 

The lane of passage for commercial ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, at a very minimum, has to be reinstituted. One vessel carrying Qatari liquefied natural gas went safely through the Strait on Sunday. Project Freedom needs to be restarted. 

Bibi Netanyahu, in a taped interview aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday night, said extracting Iran’s highly-enriched uranium remains an absolute red line. 

Air strikes, whenever they resume, might begin on reconstituted air defenses, missile launchers, fast-attack boat locations, and possibly going Dresden on the southern Iranian coast up to a mile inland, through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian island almost certainly would be a target. Some of the more uncooperative elements of the IRGC would certainly be targeted. And that would be a warm-up. It would not be too long before the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, Kharg Island, electrical distribution substations and power lines all over Iran, plus major bridge and road arteries, would be among the options to put on the injured reserve list. And the pain to the regime would only increase from there. 

If there has been a flaw in President Trump’s handling of the conflict with Iran, it’s that after pummeling them for six weeks, and squeezing to death economically for a few weeks after that, conditions the regime has never before experienced, he figured the regime would act like the paper tiger it is and give up in order to save themselves. They are a paper tiger. The stats don’t lie. But they will never yield voluntarily. 47 years of religious cult fanaticism isn’t something you can destroy militarily and economically in two months. You simply cannot expect irrational actors to act rationally.  

Threats in the past have worked somewhat. And they work especially well when they’re backed up with the Find Out feature attached to them. Trump gets full marks for delivering the blows to the regime he has to this point. But this regime is like cancer. You can blast away at it and almost kill it with chemo and radiation, but you can’t finish it off by threatening to kill it. Once you let up on treatment, the cancer will immediately begin to grow again. And when it comes back, it often is more resistant than it was the first time you hit it, making it harder to fight the next time. 

To defeat this regime requires an all-of-the-above strategy. The economic chokehold must remain in place. Project Freedom must be restarted. Any threats that arise from that shipping lane must be destroyed with dispatch. I remain convinced there are plenty of Iranians who would love to purge Iran of the IRGC and Basij force thugs once and for all, and have a score to settle with the worst of the worst, just as soon as they have the weaponry and support with which to do so. Strategically placed Special Forces like Delta and Green Berets could be put to good use in that way, equipping and training enough Iranians to give the regime another wall around them, collapsing inward. And whatever tier of military leadership we’re currently on – second, third, or fourth – we need to keep killing off until there are no more tiers of leadership left that are willing to die for an unwinnable cause.  

Donald Trump’s deal was the easy way or the hard way. The regime on Sunday chose the hard way. It’s time to accede to their request. Conventional wisdom says that you can expect the second act of Operation Epic Fury, or its yet-unnamed but highly anticipated sequel, to begin this weekend after the President has returned from his Asia trip. 

Of course, initiating the next wave of attacks while meeting with Xi Jinping would send an incredible message to the rest of the world, wouldn’t it? But the time for threats is over. President Trump has to defecate or decouple from the commode. He’s offered the regime enough carrots to gorge a warren of rabbits. It’s time to break out the sticks and get on with it. 












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