On Friday, US President Donald Trump threatened to strike the heavily fortified “Jabal Ax” site near the Natanz nuclear facility, saying that the United States may target it “very soon” if it detects developments that raise its concerns.
The site is located near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, which was severely damaged, and includes two complexes of tunnels buried at a great depth. Trump told reporters at the White House that US intelligence services are closely monitoring activity at the site.
“We may strike Jabal Ax very soon,” he added, adding: “If anything bad happens, we will strike them.” "We hit them hard."
Trump described the ongoing confrontation with Iran as a “military conflict” and not a major war for the United States, and defended Vice President J.D. Vance, who on Thursday refused to use the term “war” to describe the fighting with Tehran.
Trump said that the US strikes had become “intermittent,” adding: “Many do not call it a war.” I call it a military conflict because it is trivial to us. "It's not a big thing."
Vance said in a briefing at the White House on Thursday: “I will not call it a war.” “At the moment, there are no ongoing armed clashes,” he said, avoiding specifying whether the six-month-old standoff would end before the midterm elections on November 3.
Iran opened fire on Kuwait on Thursday, in response to rounds of US strikes targeting Iran earlier in the week, despite Vance’s talk about the absence of “ongoing armed clashes.”
The conflict cost American taxpayers more than $37.5 billion, and resulted in the deaths of 18 members of the American forces, according to a tally reported by the Associated Press.
Trump said that American losses remain much less than those incurred by the United States in previous wars, noting that since the outbreak of the war on February 28, Washington and Tel Aviv have relied on air strikes and have not deployed ground forces inside Iran.
Trump compared the war to the US military operation in Venezuela, which ended with the arrest of former President Nicolas Maduro and his transfer to New York, saying: “In Venezuela, we did not lose anyone. In this, we lost 18 people.”
He added: “In Vietnam, we lost 100,000 people. In other conflicts, we lost tens of thousands.”
US National Archives records show that 58,220 members of the US Armed Forces were killed during the Vietnam War.
When asked about describing the confrontation as a “trivial matter” despite the deaths of Americans, Trump stuck to his description, and said that the most important thing is that the United States achieved “a great success” and prevented Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.
He added: “Iran will not possess a nuclear weapon, because if it had possessed one, it might not be standing here.”
Trump attacked his political opponents through his platform, “Truth Social,” and wrote that “the lunatics of the radical left, the Democrats, and the communists” would rather the United States “lose” the war with Iran than that the president achieve “victory for America.”
He added that these are “very sick people” suffering from what he called “Trump disorder syndrome,” using the expression he usually repeats when attacking his opponents.
Trump had written in another post this week that Iran had “officially become a failed state” and “dead,” claiming that it no longer had a naval or air force or a stable currency, and that it did not pay the salaries of its soldiers or police.
Trump said that American forces destroyed Iranian radars, aircraft, and other military assets near the Strait of Hormuz, and repeated his claim that Washington now controls the strategic corridor and allows commercial ships to cross.
He also downplayed the future importance of the Strait to global energy supplies, pointing to work on new pipelines and land transport routes in the region that could reduce dependence on it.
He said: “There are many alternatives being created for the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is no longer what it was.
He referred to the development of pipelines to transport oil without passing through the strait, and talked about a land route through Syria that he said trucks were already using to transport crude.
He added: “If Iran does not become smart, very smart, it will end up with a Strait of Hormuz that is no longer largely necessary.”
Farzin Nadimi, a senior researcher at the Washington Institute, told Fox News that Tehran is increasingly relying on sea mines after repeated missile and drone attacks on commercial ships failed to achieve the effect it wanted.
Nadimi believed that Iran is changing its tactics in an attempt to disrupt shipping traffic and increase pressure on the United States and its regional partners.
Retired General Joseph Votel, former commander of the US Central Command (Centcom), said that the Iranian strategy is based on combining missiles, drones, and sea mines to expand the scope of the confrontation.
Votel added: “Their goal is to make it painful” for the United States and its partners in the region.
In a parallel context, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent said that, according to Washington, the tightened US blockade on Iran has begun to stifle its oil exports to China.
“Since the United States reimposed its blockade, no shipment of Iranian crude has successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz into China,” Besant wrote.
He added that the stocks “cannot be replaced” with the accumulation of crude oil on board ships stuck inside the strait, considering that “Iran’s export artery is being cut off.”
He continued: “Stuck oil, limited storage capabilities, and rapidly shrinking revenues.”
Besant's statements fall within the Trump administration's expansion of "Operation Economic Pariah," which combines sanctions with other economic measures targeting Iran's financing networks and revenue sources.
Oil revenues constitute one of Iran's primary foreign exchange channels, while the US administration is betting on a combination of military pressure, blockade, and financial sanctions to reduce the resources available to Tehran.
In recent days, Besant announced an additional tightening of financial sanctions on entities linked to Iran, and said that the United States and its allies are seeking to cut off the remaining financing channels used by Tehran.
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said that Iran has become in a “very weak position” militarily and economically as a result of American pressure.
Israeli media quoted him as saying that Tehran may be trying to show that it is “fine,” but its military and economic conditions indicate the opposite.
He added that the measures taken by Trump “militarily and economically” pushed Iran into an “extremely difficult position,” warning of additional American pressure if Tehran continues to refuse to give up its nuclear ambitions and what he called its “regional aggression.”
