US warplanes bombed Iranian coastal radar and air defense sites on Friday and again on Saturday, striking 10 targets near the Strait of Hormuz in the second wave.
The US attacks are the latest in a series of military escalations since the announcement of a “ceasefire” on June 17, when US President Donald Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at Versailles.
After ordering Saturday’s strikes, Trump threatened to annihilate the country. The United States, he wrote, “will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
As he has done repeatedly, Trump is using genocidal language, threatening to annihilate a country and exterminate large portions of its population. As with his earlier outbursts, the vow to make Iran “no longer exist” carries an implicit threat to use nuclear weapons.
The attacks and threats come amid a deepening political crisis within the American ruling class over the ceasefire Trump announced on June 17. In the 11 days since, the deal has come under sustained attack from dominant sections of both the Republican and Democratic parties, which have denounced it as a surrender to Tehran.
Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said it “negotiates away the victories” of the war. The Democrats condemned the agreement as having failed to secure the interests of US imperialism. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that under the deal,“Iran is stronger and America is less safe.”
Hellbound and Down 