IRAN WAR GOES HOT! President Announces, as Far as he's Concerned, the Ceasefire "is over!'
Trump: "To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They're scum!”
Besides saying the ceasefire is over as far as he is concerned, the president added, “They’re scum…. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people….” The president did add a minor caveat that he might defer to others for the final decision, as though the decision might not be final.
I’ll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don’t see it. I don’t like these people.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars.
Trump also said he would “probably hit them hard again tonight…. Let’s just finish the job,” and “if it happens again, it will get much worse.” The US vice president also warned, “We’re going to punch back harder than ever.”
Vance went on:
“The basic deal that we cut was: ‘We’ll lift our blockade if you stop shooting at ships, but if you shoot at ships, we are going to punch back, and we’re going to punch back harder than ever before.’ That was the deal. They said they would stop shooting at ships and what happened 24 hours ago, they started shooting at ships again…. We’re going to knock the hell out of them.”
Shortly after the president spoke, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth cancelled a trip he had planned to Israel. This could be an indicator that the administration thinks Iranian attacks on Israel are about to become severe again.
The Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ghalibaf, also said, at around the same time, he thinks the ceasefire is over:
And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said:
Naval and Aerospace forces of the IRGC … struck 85 key sites of US military facilities in:
Mina Salman Port & the 5th fleet Base of Bahrain
Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait
An MQ9 drone was also shot down.
Iran media began telling people,
If you live in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, book a one way, GET OUT IMMEDIATELY!
Indicating a return to full-on war was imminent. Other warnings quickly went out from the IRGC:
The US Treasury officially …
…revoked its authorization for Iranian oil sales, restoring sanctions that had been suspended under last month’s MOU….
“As President Trump and the administration have repeatedly affirmed, the MOU in effect with Iran is entirely performance-based. Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior,” the official said….
Both sides accused each other of breaking the terms of the ceasefire because the terms were deliberately vague so that Trump could try to say a deal was coming together, back when he last claimed Iran really, badly wants to make a deal.
The waiver, originally scheduled to remain in force until August 21, had permitted limited Iranian crude exports and certain financial transactions as part of efforts to stabilize shipping through Hormuz.
Washington says Tehran violated its commitment by attacking vessels that used a US-protected shipping corridor near Oman rather than a northern route that Iran has insisted ships should use….
Tehran rejected Washington’s justification, accusing the United States of repeatedly violating the cease-fire framework….
In a strongly worded statement, the ministry said the United States had committed “both minor and major violations” of the agreement over the past three weeks.
It warned that Iran would “take whatever measures it deems necessary to safeguard its national interests and security” and held Washington responsible for “the consequences of this breach of commitment.”
Iran also continues to argue that the memorandum gave Tehran, in consultation with Oman, primary responsibility for reopening and managing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
As a result, Iran announced that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is now officially “dead” and said it now now has “a clearer mandate to confront the Americans, the Israelis, and their proxies in the region and the world.”
Then, when nightfall came in the Middle East, the US began heavy bombardments in order to, as Trump had said earlier in the day, “just finish the job.”
The US is attacking Iran with more airstrikes on Donald Trump’s orders, according to the American military. Trump had threatened to “hit them hard again” at the NATO summit earlier. Iran has reportedly responded with a new Strait of Hormuz threat … and reportedly warns of massive attack on US army bases.
The following details on recent attacks have been reported:
Explosions are being heard in the Bushehr area and further south along the coast in Konarak too;
More blasts have also been heard in Bandar Abbas - which was targeted last night;
Here, the western part of the city appears to be being hit, with air defences activated;
There are power cuts in Chabahar where explosions were heard too;
Israeli media have reported that the US warned its ally ahead of the attacks;
A military source told Nour News that Iran’s armed forces would launch a “massive” attack on US army bases in the region shortly;
And the outlet also said that the attack on Bushehr didn’t damage the nuclear plant there.
Iran’s Mehr News Agency is reporting that explosions have been heard in the southeastern city of Iranshahr, although the nature of the sounds is not yet clear.
It comes after US Central Command announced it had begun a second wave of strikes on Wednesday after a series of attacks overnight on Tuesday.
The latest report by Hal Turner, which he notes is unconfirmed, was that Iran successfully hit a US destroyer:
The USS Michael Murphy … took a direct hit from an Iranian “Noor” ASCM, after their IADS system failed to intercept a swarm attack, last night.
The ship is on currently on fire and there are significant casualties. Multiple KIA [killed in action]. Early reports of … her sinking are premature.
All lubed up, but nowhere to go
Predictably oil prices shot up more than 7% as the stories built momentum throughout the day. Latest prices on Oilprice.com, as of the initial writing of this article, were WTI crude at $74.47/bbl and Brent crude at $78.02. At one point, Brent reached $79.76.
Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted massive offensive airstrikes hitting more than 80 military targets inside Iran. According to CENTCOM, the operation utilized precision-guided and 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions against multiple coastal areas, including Qeshm Island, Sirik, as well as the major port city of Bandar Abbas.
The revoking of the sanctions reprieve suddenly leaves, at least, 63-million barrels of crude that Iran had rushed out of port stranded in the sea, though the numbers seem a little unclear:
Since the memorandum of understanding was signed in mid-June, Iran has rushed to load cargoes from its key export sites at Kharg Island, and move its tankers out of the Gulf as soon as possible, after weeks of virtually no exports because of the U.S. blockade that began in mid-April.
The surge in Iranian shipments out of the Gulf and into waters near the Malacca and Singapore Straits gave Iran a lifeline to boost its exports that had suffered from the U.S. blockade.
China has remained Iran’s key customer as other buyers are reluctant to commit to purchases. Rightly so, the U.S. has now ended the waiver, sanctions are in place again, and the buyers in India that were considering potential purchases have likely backed out.
Iran is thus left with millions of barrels of crude oil on tankers moving or idling in a large area from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca. Most of the laden tankers do not broadcast destination or broadcast they are for orders, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Currently, as many as 63 million barrels of Iranian oil are either in transit or idling in tankers, per Bloomberg’s estimates based on data from Vortexa.
“Iran managed to ship out 60 million barrels of crude oil since the US Navy blockade paused in mid-June 2026,” TankerTrackers.com said late on Tuesday, after the U.S.-Idran tensions escalated again.
“If the blockade were to resume now due to escalating tensions, Iran would be stuck with ~50 million barrels of crude oil and refined products.”
None of the oil that has shipped was headed for the US. It was all destined for Asian ports.
Adding further strain to what will prove to be the worst energy crisis in world history, major oil exporter, Russia, due to the international shortages it is now suffering because of Ukrainian bombardment of its refineries and other oil infrastructure, banned all diesel exports.
The current Ukrainian campaign is reportedly one of the most aggressive, with longer-range strikes now confirming just how far Ukraine can reach into Russia’s energy infrastructure….
Ukrainian drones have now hit over 16 major Russian refineries and fuel terminals, knocking out over 30% of the country’s oil refining capacity.
Russia is currently facing a ~20% shortfall in domestic gasoline production, and plans to import up to 400,000 tonnes of fuel per month from neighboring countries to cover the deficit. Indeed, Russia has begun importing fuel from India with at least 60,000 metric tonnes of petrol having already been dispatched.
The world seems to be hellbent on making sure it suffers a massive oil crisis. As a result, another article below notes that the sour crude available from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is the kind used for making diesel and jet fuel—the kind where the US is dependent on ME oil—may be out in just nine more days. If true, that would be much sooner than the timeline given a while back by the US president.
It was only three weeks ago that Donald Trump sat in the mirrored splendour of the Palace of Versailles and signed a memorandum of understanding designed to end his war with Iran. Now he has declared the agreement to be “over” and denounced its Iranian signatories as “scum”, “liars” and “sick people” – and the hard reality is that no-one should be surprised.
The 14-point memorandum was a hollow shell of an agreement that settled nothing. For Trump, its sole purpose was to allow him to claim a swift victory. For Iran’s leaders, it was a survival plan intended to strengthen their grip on power. Not one of the central points of contention between America and Iran was finally resolved by the memorandum.
That is it in a nutshell. It captures the shortfalls of the agreement that I said from the beginning were very likely to be its undoing, even though President Trump clearly didn’t want to go back into war because the economic damage to the US and the world would, as he eventually admitted, create economic “bedlam.” The fault lines of the agreement have always been …
The vague wording throughout, designed to leave room for both sides to interpret things their own way in order to get Iran to sign on. The president hoped, in the least, to buy some time for the US to get some oil, and that failed.
All the stickiest issues over which Iran and the US have never been close on agreement were left to be ironed out over the summer months. That would be, in particular, its uranium enrichment program, its stockpile of already enriched uranium, and its missiles.
But does he mean it? During his war with Iran, Trump shredded anything that might have remained of his personal credibility. His rollercoaster ride of pronouncements ranged from threatening to end Iranian “civilisation”, to blowing up all of the country’s power stations and issuing expletive-strewn demands for its “crazy” leaders to reopen the Strait.
In among these fulminations, Trump would also declare that talks with Iran were “going well”, the Islamic Republic “wanted to make a deal” and even that his foes had supposedly “agreed to everything”.
Trump might have renounced the peace deal and heaped vitriol on Iran’s leaders today, but he is perfectly capable of declaring tomorrow that a wonderful settlement has suddenly been reached.
The re-ignition of full-on hot war over the course of the Middle-Eastern desert night would indicate that he does mean it this time. The question remaining is “Does Trump even have a plan for bringing this war to an end.” At the moment, all of his on-again/off-again actions and threats, ranging all the way up to likely mass genocide, make him look like he is rudderless in the middle of the endangered strait.
