<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s<\/span> phony ceasefire with Iran is over. \u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, I think it\u2019s over,\u201d President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, referring to a preliminary truce inked in Islamabad, Pakistan, in June. That ceasefire<\/a>, an American capitulation intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a key oil and gas shipping route whose closure by Iran was wreaking havoc<\/a> on the global economy \u2014 never quite took effect. The price of oil spiked to its highest level in weeks following Trump\u2019s Wednesday remarks.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to deal with them anymore. They\u2019re scum,\u201d said<\/a> Trump, referring to Iran\u2019s leaders, as he wrapped up his trip to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. \u201cThey\u2019re cuckoo.\u201d At one point in his remarks, the 80-year-old president claimed that a U.S. warship was attacked by the \u201cthe Islamic Republic of Japan<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The June agreement between the United States and Iran, designed to usher in further negotiations toward permanently ending the war that Trump began<\/a> on February 28, echoed another faux ceasefire<\/a>, signed in April, which was also largely a fiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s statement that he \u201cthinks\u201d the ceasefire has concluded surprised one U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. \u201cShouldn\u2019t he know?\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n That official said the Trump administration had mismanaged the conflict and been repeatedly outmaneuvered by Iran<\/a>, leading to a \u201ctwilight state\u201d between war and peace, which has allowed Tehran to fortify its defenses and reconsolidate power. \u201cHe must be trying for the record of how many times you can lose the same war.\u201d<\/p>\n An Intercept analysis found that, despite celebrating the June agreement<\/a> as a victory, the Trump administration failed to achieve<\/a> any of its war aims. For weeks, the White House has failed to respond to repeated requests for confirmation that the June ceasefire had collapsed and no goals of the war were reached. The White House did not reply to a question on Wednesday concerning the collapse of the ceasefire nor Trump\u2019s claim of an attack by \u201cthe Islamic Republic of Japan.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The United States\u00a0attacked Iran on Tuesday, after reimposing sanctions on Iranian oil sales. U.S. Central Command said<\/a> that it had struck \u201cover 80 targets with precision munitions as an immediate response to Iran\u2019s latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d Iran did not claim responsibility for\u00a0Tuesday\u2019s attacks on commercial ships, including a Saudi oil tanker and a Qatari ship carrying liquefied natural gas in waters off Oman\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n CENTCOM also claimed to have attacked<\/a> \u201cmore than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait.\u201d U.S. officials have previously claimed<\/a> to have completely annihilated Iran\u2019s naval forces. \u201cTheir Navy is gone,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social on April 11, just after the first ceasefire was announced and fell apart.<\/p>\n Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran\u2019s top negotiator and Parliament speaker, accused the United States of multiple violations of the June ceasefire agreement, in a Tuesday post<\/a>. \u201cThe era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don\u2019t fold,\u201d he\u00a0wrote. Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0published on state media on Wednesday, that in response to U.S. violations of the ceasefire, it had attacked 85 U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait and also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re vicious, violent people,\u201d Trump said during his remarks in Ankara.<\/p>\n During the president\u2019s war of choice on Iran, the U.S. and Israel struck more than 17,000 separate targets in 40 days \u2014 a rate of strikes\u00a0almost unprecedented<\/a>\u00a0in modern conflict, according to the civilian harm-monitoring group Airwars<\/a>. On the first day of the war, the U.S. attacked the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school\u00a0<\/a>in Minab, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. In the weeks that followed, tens of thousands more civilians would be killed or wounded in U.S.\u2013Israeli strikes, according to World Health Organization estimates.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n The official number of dead and wounded U.S. personnel<\/a> stands at 426, an almost 11 percent increase since the first ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was struck on April 8.\u00a0For months,\u00a0The Intercept has reported<\/a> that the Pentagon\u2019s official tally of dead and wounded military personnel from the Iran war is a gross undercount, stemming from what another U.S. government official called a \u201ccasualty cover-up<\/a>.\u201d The Defense Casualty Analysis System, which tracks \u201cdeceased, wounded, ill or injured<\/a>\u201d service members for\u00a0Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known American casualties. The true number exceeds 625<\/a>.<\/p>\n