On Monday morning, US President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that the United States and Iran had held “conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” He said he had “instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period.”
Just two days earlier, Trump had threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants if the country did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
Trump said that he is postponing an attack for just five days. This is completely inconsistent with the claim that major progress has been made toward a negotiated settlement. What it means is that Trump is working within the framework of ultimatums. No one would expect that this war could be settled within five days—even if negotiations were going extremely well. At best, it might be possible to hold out the possibility of an indefinite ceasefire to allow talks to proceed. Nothing of the sort was indicated by Trump. The entire story is not simply unbelievable. It is sinister.
Trump has used “negotiations” as cover for military strikes three times in the past year. In January, US officials indicated they were seeking negotiations with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro hours before the raid in which he was kidnapped by US special forces. In June 2025, while indirect talks with Iran were ongoing, seven B-2 bombers hit Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer. On February 28, the US murdered Iran’s supreme leader and launched the current war while negotiators were engaged in talks in Geneva that had concluded just two days earlier. Every time, Trump talked peace while plotting a criminal war of aggression.
It cannot be excluded that discussions are ongoing in some format. But if talks had been taking place, they would have been with the same people Trump has publicly threatened to murder or already attempted to murder. In statements to the press on Monday, Trump boasted: “We’ve wiped out the leadership phase one, phase two and largely phase three.”
The five-day window corresponds closely with the timeline for the arrival of Marine forces capable of launching a ground invasion. Two Marine amphibious groups—the Tripoli from Okinawa and the Boxer from San Diego—are converging on the Persian Gulf with roughly 4,500 Marines. The Tripoli is arriving this weekend. An additional 50,000 US troops are already deployed across the region.
On Monday, just hours after Trump made his announcement, the New York Times carried an article titled “Pentagon Officials Weigh Deployment of Airborne Troops for Iran War.” The article reported that senior military officials are preparing to deploy a combat brigade from the 82nd Airborne Division’s “Immediate Response Force”—3,000 soldiers capable of deploying anywhere in the world within 18 hours—to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub.
Nearly four weeks of bombing—more than 8,000 targets struck, according to CENTCOM, 130 naval vessels destroyed, the supreme leader and dozens of senior officials assassinated—have not overthrown the Iranian government or reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Airstrikes alone cannot accomplish what the administration set out to do. The US media is already agitating for a ground invasion. The Wall Street Journal has argued that control of Kharg Island is the key to forcing open the Strait of Hormuz.
An operation to seize Kharg Island—or any other strategic point tied to the Strait of Hormuz—would not be improvised over a weekend. It would be planned and set in motion weeks in advance, with preparatory strikes shaping the battlefield, forces repositioned across oceans and units placed on alert. A source with knowledge of White House thinking told Axios on March 20: “We need about a month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes, take the island and then get them by the balls and use it for negotiations.”
Iran’s foreign minister has directly rejected Trump’s claims. “There are no talks with the United States,” he stated. “President Trump’s statements are an attempt to lower energy prices and buy time for military plans.” This assessment corresponds to the objective reality. The five-day pause announced by Trump aligns not with any credible negotiating timetable but with the arrival of Marine and naval assets in the theater and the further “softening up” of Iranian defense, with US and Israeli strikes on Iran continuing during the five-day period.
Nor can Kharg Island be treated as the only, or even the main, option under consideration. The intense public focus on “taking the island” could prove to be an attempt to conceal a different military objective: a coastal seizure aimed at physically controlling approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, including major port areas; or deep inland raids on nuclear sites, such as Isfahan or Natanz, requiring thousands of troops and extended occupation of Iranian territory.
The 82nd Airborne doesn't seize islands. It seizes airfields and inland objectives, establishing a perimeter for follow-on forces. A former assistant secretary of defense described the Isfahan scenario as beginning with 'an airborne force seizing the area to establish a protective cordon enabling a sizable assault force of elite units from Joint Special Operations Command to secure the facilities.' That is what the 82nd Airborne trains for. Its involvement suggests an inland mission, not an amphibious island assault.
Whatever option is, or already has been, selected, it will result in a massive loss of lives, both Iranian and American.
The Washington Post reported last week that the administration is seeking $200 billion from Congress to fund the war, a supplement that would bring this year’s direct military spending above $1 trillion. For comparison, at the peak of the Iraq occupation, when 170,000 American soldiers were on the ground, annual war spending reached $144 billion. The Iran war has not yet involved ground troops, and the administration is already demanding more.
This war is part of a plan to re-establish American global hegemony through global war. The $200 billion supplemental is not the cost of a limited war. It is the down payment on an escalating global war directed ultimately at China, which purchases 37.7 percent of all crude oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
All of this is unfolding within the framework of complete illegality. The United States has launched a war of aggression—the crime for which Nazi leaders were prosecuted at Nuremberg. The systematic assassination of Iran’s political and military leaders constitutes a campaign of extrajudicial killing prohibited by the laws of armed conflict.
The war was launched without a declaration of war or congressional authorization. Far from opposing the war, however, the Democrats have funded and endorsed it. The entire Democratic leadership—Schumer, Jeffries, Durbin, Clark, Aguilar—voted for the $839 billion military budget. On ABC’s This Week, former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Donna Brazile declared: “Democrats understand that Iran has posed a threat, not just to the region, the Gulf, but to the world itself.”
What is being revealed is a complete breakdown of the mechanisms of democracy. A president launches an illegal war, murders the leaders of a country, threatens a war of annihilation against a nation of 90 million people—and there exist no mechanisms within the political establishment capable of opposing, let alone stopping, this ever-expanding war.