Trump threatens Iran but leaves open offramp

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Iran but left open a path to return from the brink, suggesting that he would back down if Tehran pledged to never build a nuclear weapon.

“They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, including their nuclear weapons,” Trump said. While his preference is to “solve this problem through diplomacy,” the president pledged to “never allow the world’s number 1 sponsor of terror… to have a nuclear weapon.”

The speech gave little insight into Trump’s thinking about the possibility of war with Iran as the U.S. continues to surge American forces to the Middle East at rates not seen since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In making the case for war, he reiterated claims that the Iranian regime killed more than 30,000 protestors in a brutal crackdown last month and alleged that Tehran is “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”

“Trump tried to sound very tough — repeating accusations against Iran that will serve as a basis for his case for war, if he chooses war,” said Trita Parsi, executive director of the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. “Yet he also kept the door open for a deal.”

While the speech focused primarily on domestic issues, Trump addressed several other foreign policy initiatives, lauding his administration’s peacekeeping efforts. “In my first 10 months, I ended eight wars,” he claimed, referring to conflicts including last year’s brief conflict between India and Pakistan as well as a threat of war between Egypt and Ethiopia.

But the president had little to say about the Ukraine war, which he once hoped to end in the early days of his second term. Urging an end to the conflict, he said that 25,000 soldiers are dying per month in the war.

Trump struck a relatively mild tone in his criticism of the Supreme Court, saying last week’s decision to overturn many of his tariffs was “unfortunate.” The president connected the issue of tariffs to his peacemaking efforts, arguing that “many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs.”

Trump also lauded his administration’s efforts to restore “American dominance in the Western hemisphere.” He described the January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as “one of the most complex, spectacular feats of military competence and power in world history.” To honor the raid, Trump awarded a helicopter pilot who was wounded in the attack with a Congressional Medal of Honor.

The president also celebrated the impact of his campaign of airstrikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, saying “nobody wants to go fishing anymore.” And he claimed responsibility for the Sunday killing of cartel leader El Mencho, who he described as “one of the most sinister” drug kingpins in the world.