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President Donald Trump on Thursday alluded to internal chaos within Iran as the ceasefire tenuously holds.
“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know!” he wrote on Truth Social. “The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), is CRAZY!”
As it stands currently, the U.S. and Iran are embroiled in a violent war, but the fighting has come to a halt amid a fragile and open-ended ceasefire agreement.
President Trump has hinted previously on several occasions that the Iranian leadership was unstable, noting that U.S. and Israeli strikes on the region had killed those in power. This has purportedly left a severe power vacuum in Iran.
“Their leaders are all gone, the next set of leaders are all gone, and the next set of leaders are mostly gone,” he said in late March. “And now, nobody wants to be a leader over there anymore. We’re having a hard time, we want to talk to them, and there’s nobody to talk to.”
This internal chaos, perhaps, is why negotiations with Iran have been notoriously difficult, as communications with Iranian leadership, through Pakistani mediators, have been somewhat confusing regarding the president’s demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump maintained on Thursday that the U.S. military blockade on the Strait would remain in place until a deal with Iran was reached. He also said that the U.S. Navy had received authorization to “shoot and kill” any vessel dropping mines into the Strait.
“There is to be no hesitation,” he wrote. “Additionally, our mine ‘sweepers’ are clearing the Strait right now. I am hereby ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level!”
As far as a timeline on Operation Epic Fury and a potential deal with Iran, the ceasefire remains open-ended.
“Let’s level-set on where we are,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday. “Yesterday, President Trump announced an extension of the ceasefire. He’s maintaining and generously offering a bit of flexibility to a regime who has been completely tarnished because of Operation Epic Fury. There’s obviously a lot of internal division. This is a battle between the pragmatists and the hardliners in Iran right now, and the president wants a unified response.”
She alleged that Iran is losing $500 million every day that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. “The Kharg Island is completely full, they can’t move oil in and out, they can’t even pay their own people as a result of this economic leverage that President Trump has inflicted over them. So, he’s satisfied with that as he awaits their response, and we will see. The president has not set a firm deadline to receive an Iranian proposal.”