US Congress: Trump White House Has "No Plan" For Dealing With Strait of Hormuz

 We're entering the heart of the "find out" phase. But what else do you expect from a real-estate slumlord-turned-reality show host-turned president? 

Anyway, via Middle East Eye:

Democratic senators said on Tuesday night that the US has “no plan” for the war on Iran, after President Donald Trump’s administration conducted a two-hour behind-closed-doors briefing for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This absence of any coordinated strategic thinking extends to the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy chokepoint, regime change in Iran and the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.

Following the Trump administration’s briefing on Tuesday, a procession of opposition senators came out to condemn what they described as the illegality, incoherence and lies surrounding the war, with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland saying Trump was simply doing what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wanted to do for 40 years.

“What you hear behind closed doors is essentially what we’re hearing in the public domain, which is complete incoherence,” Van Hollen said after the briefing.

“But we do know, from Secretary Rubio, that Netanyahu decided to strike Iran, and so here we are doing what Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to do for 40 years, which was to attack Iran,” Van Hollen said, referring to remarks made by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, on 2 March.   

“It is so much worse than you thought,” said Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator. 

“The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation. Trump has not given a single clear reason for the war and has no plan to end it.” 

[SNIP]

The senators who spoke out after the US briefing all condemned the apparent lack of any plan or any real objectives when it came to every area of the war on Iran.

Both Van Hollen and Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut, said that they’d been told in the briefing that the US administration’s goals for the war did not involve destroying Iran’s nuclear programme or bringing about regime change. 

“So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime – probably a more anti-American hardline regime – will still be in charge,” Murphy said.

Van Hollen echoed this, referring to public reporting on the CIA’s assessment of what would happen if the Iranian leadership was taken out, which is that “you’re likely to get an even more radical group”. 

The goals of the war, Murphy said, seemed to be “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories”. 

Asked what would happen when Iran restarted production on these things, Murphy said that US officials “hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war”.

“And on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN,” Murphy posted on X. “I can’t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice to say, right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open.” 

This, Murphy said, “is unforgivable, because this part of the disaster was 100 percent foreseeable”. 

Seems like the only nation who will decide when this ends is Iran.