US Intelligence Estimates Iran Retains Most of Its Missiles; Could Weather US Blockade Long-Term
Trump rejects Iranian response and threatens to restart the war with a nuclear first strike on Iran which has sufficient plutonium to build at least 210 nukes as he considers selling out US to China.
President Donald J. Trump answering questions from the US media in the Oval Office. Trump ran for president as an America First conservative peace candidate but has governed as an America Last neocon war president while saying he is not concerned at all by the economic pain he is causing US citizens from his undeclared war on Iran causing his poll numbers to dip precipitously.
Trump Rejects Iranian Response to His Proposed Peace Framework
On Sunday, Iran provided their response to the Trump administration’s proposed one-page peace framework. They are proposing to separate nuclear talks from the negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while the Trump administration wants nuclear commitments up front while Trump has refused to lift the US naval blockade until Iran agrees to suspend all nuclear enrichment for a period of 15-20 years and surrender its entire Highly Enriched Uranium stockpile to the US. As part of its peace proposal, Iran agreed to end its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to the US naval blockade on Iran, a guarantee that the US and Israel would never attack Iran again, lifting US economic sanctions, un-freezing Iranian financial assets and some mechanism to reimburse Iran for war damages such as a toll on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump responded by rejecting Iran’s response to a U.S. proposal to bring an end to the war in the Middle East, posting Sunday afternoon. “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Trump said on Truth Social. He also denounced it as “stupid” and “a piece of garbage” throwing a temper tantrum because Iran has yet to surrender to his maximalist peace demands over ten weeks after the war began. Yesterday, he suggested that a full-scale war with Iran would resume very soon if Iran continued to refuse to capitulate to his maximalist peace demands. During a press conference yesterday morning in which he said a peace deal with Iran remains “very possible” after claiming last week that Iran had already agreed to all US peace terms, President Trump stated that his own declared ceasefire with Iran is “unbelievably weak” and on “massive life support.”
Politico reported on Trump’s remarks at his press conference:
“I would call [the ceasefire] the weakest right now, after reading that piece of garbage they sent us,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “I didn’t even finish reading it. … The ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says ‘Sir, your loved one has an approximately 1 percent chance of living.’” The U.S. will have a “complete victory” over Iran, he added, having already kneecapped Iran’s military forces, battering its navy and missile arsenals, and taking out several key leaders. “A lot of people said, ‘Well, does he have a plan?’ Yes, the best plan ever,” Trump said on Monday. “It’s a very simple plan. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And they won’t.” However, Trump said that there is still room for a diplomatic solution between the two nations. “It is very possible. I’ve had a deal with them four or five times,” Trump said. “They change their mind. They are very dishonorable people, the leadership.”
According to Iranian media, Tehran’s proposal included a demand for war damage compensation, as well as an end to the US blockade in the Strait of Hormuz with no further attacks and a lifting of sanctions. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei claimed Iran’s proposal was “generous and responsible” and Washington continued to put forward “unreasonable demands.”
Iranian Member of Parliament Ebrahim Rezaei responded by stating that “One of Iran’s options in the even of another attack could be 90 percent enrichment” showing how the US war of aggression is pushing Iran to put its nuclear weapons program on overdrive to deter future US and Israeli attacks which is the polar opposite of what the administration is saying it is trying to achieve. Trump’s claim that he “had a deal with Iran four or five times” has no factual basis whatsoever as he has rejected every peace deal that Iranian leaders have offered him since March 2025. Following Trump’s latest tirade, a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran appears farther away than ever before with no end in sight to his undeclared war with Iran, which has lasted two and a half months to date.
Trump’s statement that the cease-fire has “a one percent chance” of lasting means that he is saying there is a ninety-nine percent chance of his forever war resuming into a full-scale shooting war with Iran as it was during the first five and a half weeks of the conflict. Indeed, CNN reports that some of his aides are saying he is more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations against Iran than he has in weeks. CNN notes that some, including officials in the Pentagon, have argued for a more aggressive approach to pressuring the Iranians to the table — including targeted strikes that further weaken Tehran’s position. Others, however, are still pushing to give diplomacy a fair shot, the sources said. One official said it does not appear that Iran is listening or taking anyone seriously, a regional official said yesterday. This official said that the US and Iran are operating on two different tolerances and timelines in their approach to negotiations, and Tehran has withstood economic pressure for decades.
Tucker Carlson Condemns Trump’s Iran Nuke Statement as “The World’s Dumbest Talking Point.”
America First conservative champions and former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have come under heavy attack from President Donald Trump as he has abandoned his conservative principles and joined the Deep State. Tucker strongly criticized Trump’s oft-repeated propaganda line of “Do you want Iran to have nuclear weapons"? as “the world’s dumbest talking point.”
While taking questions from the press on the White House lawn today, President Trump said the financial suffering of Americans stemming from his undeclared war on Iran are not motivating him at all to negotiate a peaceful end to the war with Iran. He told reporters, “Not even a little bit…I don't think about Americans' financial situation; I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” This is why Trump is destined to be remembered as a failed president because he has admitted he doesn’t care about the people he was elected to represent and is refusing to put America First as he did during his first term. He says his only motivation is to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon (in furtherance of Israeli interests) even though they likely have had a modest nuclear arsenal for many years and there is absolutely nothing he can do to change that short of a US nuclear first strike.
The truth is that Trump has fought this war on false pretenses. This war has nothing to do with Iran having nuclear weapons as underscored by the fact that the US has failed to reduce the amount of Iranian Highly Enriched Uranium by even one pound since he started bombing Iran eleven months ago. It has everything to do with expanding US and Israeli imperial control over the Middle East region and it has objectively failed to do so on both counts.
During his interview on the Megyn Kelly show last week, Tucker Carlson remarked that President Trump’s statement which he mutters every day to try to justify his failed war in the Middle East, “Do you want Iran to have nuclear weapons?” is “the world’s dumbest talking point.” I’ve been thinking the same thing for the past year since he began saying it. The only people saying it are those who are unable to think for themselves. I believe that Tucker and Megyn are two of the most courageous America First conservative champions in the country. They have consistently stuck to their conservative principles unlike Trump who abandoned them when he started a forever war for Israel against Iran.
One of my friends recently remarked that Trump’s war against Iran is “ridding the world of the threat of nuclear weapons,” apparently blissfully unaware of the far greater nuclear threats posed by the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea. It amazes me that so many people have been misled to believe that a few atomic bombs in Iranian hands pose a more existential threat to the US and the world than 16,000 Russian nuclear weapons, 4,000 Chinese nuclear weapons, 150 North Korean nuclear weapons, none of which Trump appears to be overly concerned about at all. The reality is that Iran has had the ability to produce nuclear weapons since 2003 and likely already has a modest nuclear arsenal so there is nothing we can do to change that short of executing a nuclear first strike to destroy it. Iran’s leaders have never even threatened to use them proving they are rational, containable and deterrable and proving all the Israeli/neocon warmonger Iran talking points completely bogus.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Trump is considering a wide range of options including resuming his ‘Project Freedom’ operation for US warships to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and intensifying the US bombing campaign on Iran following US missile strikes on three Iranian ports last week.
US President Donald Trump said he was considering renewing Project Freedom while speaking to Fox News on Monday, adding that the renewal would expand beyond escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump noted he has not made a final decision on the matter. Meanwhile, Trump convened a meeting with senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and top National Security Council officials, to discuss whether to resume strikes against Iran. A US official told The Jerusalem Post that, in terms of military readiness and forces on the ground, everything is prepared should Trump decide to order renewed military operations against Iran. Some officials within the administration believe the president will refrain from launching an attack until after returning from China.
However, officials added that Trump is unlikely to pursue any of those options until he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing from May 14-15th, which will be his first summit meeting with Xi in Beijing since 2017.
Trump Plan to Sell Out US to Communist China and Annex Communist Venezuela
President Donald J. Trump smiling at Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Seoul summit in October 2025. He says he is looking forward to giving the murderous Communist dictator a hug while he prepares to sell out US factories and businesses to America’s main Communist adversary.
In late April, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly and very well. Doesn’t that beat fighting?” The PRC has killed 1,600 times more Americans with their COVID-19 biological first strike on the US that killed 1.2 million Americans as well as the fentanyl they have used to kill 400,000 Americans in the past half dozen years than Iran has killed in the past half century. Yet paradoxically Trump seems to view them as a mere ‘economic competitor’ rather than an enemy like he views Iran while looking forward to a big hug from the leader of the most genocidal regime in the world today. If the US were not allied with Israel and did not have any military forces deployed in the Persian Gulf region, we would never have gone to war with Iran and Trump might have a similar outlook with Iran which poses a much lesser threat to the US than does the PRC underscoring the importance of ending America’s entangling alliance with Israel to prevent us from getting bogged down in new forever wars in the Middle East.
Trump’s visit to Beijing comes at a time when the US has suffered its greatest strategic defeat since the Vietnam War in his failed war against Iran while Xi is preparing to blockade and/or invade Taiwan due in large part to the fact that the US military has expended too many of its conventional missiles to effectively deter Chinese aggression. I have been urging President Trump to mediate a confederation agreement between the PRC and Taiwan to prevent a Chinese airborne and amphibious invasion of Taiwan which could quickly escalate to a nuclear World War Three. He has stated he plans to discuss US arms shipments to Taiwan and that China wants us to stop them.
Air Force One is now enroute to the PRC with sixteen US CEO’s including Starlink CEO Elon Musk and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, with Trump saying “we make a lot of money from China” and looking to make a massive trade deal with Beijing. Yesterday, it was reported that Trump plans to ask China to build $1 trillion worth of factories in the US and potentially buy up US land, resources and businesses which would serve to make the US more, not less, dependent on our main Communist enemy than ever before.
The Hill reported on Trump’s potential betrayal of US national security to our Communist Chinese adversary:
Reports that President Trump is considering a deal that would allow China to invest $1 trillion in the U.S. are setting off alarm bells among conservative Republicans. China last October reportedly offered to ramp up investment in the U.S. in exchange for the Trump administration rolling back national security restrictions on Chinese deals and providing a break on tariffs for any factories built on American soil, according to Bloomberg.
This development comes at a time when he should be eliminating all US dependence on China for our civilian and military supply chains just over a year after he declared ‘Liberation Day’ and America’s economic independence from Beijing with steep tariffs on Chinese goods on April 2, 2025.
New York Times columnist Oren Cass wrote in a Friday op-ed that Trump “may be on the verge of tying the United States to China irrevocably,” describing the $1 trillion investment scenario outlined in Bloomberg’s reporting as “an unforced error of world-historic proportions” if it goes through. “Even a fraction of that amount would blow apart what remains of our economic defenses, weakening national security and supply-chain resilience, handing the Chinese Communist Party a powerful tool with which to subvert our market, undermining the basic logic of the president’s own trade agenda and kneecapping our efforts at rebuilding domestic industry,” wrote Cass, the chief economist at conservative think tank American Compass.
The prospect quickly drew negative attention from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters, including conservative columnist and author Gordon Chang, who has repeatedly warned against China’s influence in the U.S. “China’s regime will use investments in America to subvert and destroy our country,” Chang wrote on X. “Do not allow our enemy more bases of subversion here.” China has been a longtime central focus of MAGA foreign policy under Trump’s leadership, with many in the president’s core base viewing the global superpower as the most consequential threat to the U.S.’s long-term economic, technological and military future.
Yesterday, he said he is “seriously considering making (Communist) Venezuela the 51st state,” which would help ensure permanent Democrat control of both Houses of Congress and the White House. That combined with his plan to have Communist China invest such a vast sum of money could see it buying up US companies or building manufacturing plants with tens of thousands of US citizens working for Chinese companies shows how little he understands about the real threat which is Communist China. President Donald Trump’s undeclared forever war on Iran is causing the US economy to teeter on the edge of an economic depression. His refusal to negotiate a peace deal with Iran except on maximalist US terms has caused him to become so desperate he is willing to bend the knee to Chinese President Xi Jinping in exchange for him throwing him an economic lifeline.
Trump reposted this Stalin-like image of a golden statue of him doing the Communist fist salute in Miami, Florida weeks after he posted a picture of himself depicted as the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message has been consistent. He wants Americans to revere and worship him as godlike figure.
Trump ran as an America First conservative candidate but his reported plan to sell out the US to China like Biden tried to do and his decision to allow Israel to order him to fight its wars show that he is one of the most America Last presidents, if not the most America Last president in modern history. Last week, Trump posted a picture of a golden statue of himself doing the Communist fist salute reminiscent of statues of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. I see his followers worshipping him like a proverbial golden calf every day like he is a messiah-like figure who can do no wrong when he lies and puts America Last every day. His undeclared Deep State forever war on Iran is making Americans less safe and secure than ever before while making us poorer and more economically distraught while his plan to sellout the US to Communist China further weaken US national security and economic independence.
Secretary Hegseth Admits Iran Posed No Imminent Threat to US
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s testimony to the House Armed Services Committee on April 29th makes it clear that Trump’s claim that the US had to start a great power war with Iran to prevent it from building an atomic bomb was completely misleading and false. Hegseth testified that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was completely obliterated following US airstrikes in June and admitted there was no imminent threat from Iran when Trump started his unwinnable and unnecessary forever war against Iran two months ago. He stated that “Trump saw Iran at his weakest moment” so he started the war to degrade Iran’s conventional ballistic missile shield. Instead, Hegseth, testified that Iran’s failure to give up its nuclear ambitions was the reason that Trump decided to go to war against Iran, which is a very flimsy excuse to go to start a great power war that has greatly degraded US military power and is causing severe economic damage to the US and global economy. The fact is that Iran is never going to give up its nuclear ambitions, so Hegseth’s war rationale gives Trump an open-ended pretext to continue fighting his war on Iran indefinitely.
Not only did Hegseth admit that Iran didn’t pose an imminent threat to the US, but he also admitted Iran had never been weaker before the war began which leads reasonable minds to question what was the point of starting a war with Iran in the first place given it posed us no threat. Throughout history, strong nations have attacked weak countries to obtain more power and control over them. In this case, the reason President Trump decided to attack Iran which it viewed as weak and posed little threat to us is because he wanted to expand US and Israeli imperial regional hegemony into Iran and take their oil. Trump’s unstated national security strategy, which differs substantially from his excellent National Security Strategy which he released in December, has been to push back or even eliminate the influence of all US rivals for global hegemony throughout the world outside of Russia and China itself which are the only countries he views as equals. However, with regards to his war on Iran it has had the exact opposite effect making China, Russia and Iran stronger and more powerful than they were before the war began as I will discuss later in this article.
During a hearing addressing the Pentagon’s request for its $1.5 trillion Department of War funding request, House Armed Services’ Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) concluded: “As we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started,” Smith says. He is absolutely right. US intelligence has assessed that US military strikes during Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury failed to reduce Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium stockpile which it can use along with its thousands of centrifuges to produce nuclear weapons. Smith added, “You can win a whole lot of... small battles and lose the war.” “I don’t think we know what realism means.” Today at the Politico Security Summit, he said of the Iran war, “It is very clear that the president has absolutely no idea where to go from here.” As Dr. John Mearsheimer has stated during the Vietnam War, we won all the battles and still lost the war. That will undoubtedly prove to be the case with regards to Trump’s war on Iran as well.
While the War Department testified that the price of the Iran war to date was estimated at $25 billion at the congressional hearing Hegseth gave his remarks at, one academic predicted that the price of the war could reach $1 trillion by the next decade in terms of lost US GDP and higher costs in food, fuel and other necessities. “I am certain we will reach $1 trillion for the Iran war,” said Professor Linda Bilmes, public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, in an internal interview. Her research, published two days before the temporary ceasefire announcement on April 8, identified several reasons why this military operation could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. national debt well into the future that will be paid for by the next generation of US citizens. The price of gasoline was $4.50 a gallon as of May 12th up from $2.91 before Trump started his unwinnable and unnecessary war on Iran representing an increase in price of nearly 55 percent. This is what I called ‘the Trump War Tax’ and it is a tax that will continue to increase substantially with every passing week that the US war on Iran continues.
Secretary Pete Hegseth sparring with Senate Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing on January 14, 2025. I strongly defended Hegseth believing him to be an America First conservative but he has since emerged as the leader of the dominant neoconservative wing of the White House and the most ardent warmonger in the Trump administration. In addition to his incessant lies about the Iran War, he has ordered the bombing of civilian targets in Iran in violation of US and international law exposing himself to potential prosecution as a war criminal after the war has ended.
Yesterday morning, in response to a question by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), Secretary of War Pete Hegseth testified during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Iran War budget that “Iran had three drone aircraft carriers” and “battleship capability.” In doing so, Hegseth showed his ignorance of naval capabilities since there is no nation in the world currently has battleships in active service in their naval forces. Coons stated that the US had a tradition of going to war unless there was an ‘imminent threat’ from the country we are attacking rightly concluding that the Trump administration has provided no evidence whatsoever that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States. Hegseth was unable to rebut his statement. Coons then asked him if the Trump administration had a plan to break Iran’s stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz and Hegseth completely dodged the question showing the administration has no clue how to break Iran’s control of the Strait and the Persian Gulf.
Coons drew attention to the fact that Hagseth had fired both the US Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Navy without cause in the middle of a war. “I’m stunned that you fired the 44-year chief of staff of the Army in the middle of a hot war and dismissed the Secretary of the Navy in the middle of a naval blockade. As dozens of senior flag rank officers have been dismissed, I am worried about what that does to focus and morale.”
Coons noted the president was distracted by finishing his $1 billion White House ballroom and had lost interest in the Iran War focusing on building expensive new battlecruisers which have no real mission other than a non-strategic nuclear role that could be filled by smaller ships.
“We have a president who seems more focused on a billion-dollar ballroom and a victory arch rather than achieving actual victory…And a piece, a small piece of the $1.5 trillion request in front of us is for a new Trump class of battleships, a so-called golden fleet, which I think goes in the wrong direction.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that “US intelligence has assessed that Iran could potentially last out the blockade for years” and noted multiple examples throughout history where countries were able to ride out massive economic sanctions and blockades including Cuba whose Communist regime has successfully weathered sixty-four years of a comprehensive US trade embargo. Hegseth replied by stating that the US is using a variety of means to get Iran to capitulate not just the blockade without providing any meaningful examples. Murphy also cited US intelligence assessment that 75% of Iran’s missiles have survived noting that Trump had falsely claimed that only 18-19% have survived and asked General Dan Caine to explain the disconnect between what Trump has claimed and what US intelligence has stated. Both Hegseth and Caine refused to answer to the question while Hegseth only stating the US intelligence report “might or might not be true.”
US Intelligence Estimates Show Iran is Far from Defeated, Military Capabilities Still Intact
In a March 13 Truth Social post, President Trump claimed that Iran was “totally defeated” and said in a post the following day, “We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capability.” On April 21st, Trump stated, “We’ve taken out their navy, we’ve taken out their air force, we’ve taken out their leaders.” During a Pentagon briefing on April 8th, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated, “Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield, a capital V military victory.” He added, “By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come.” But US intelligence officials have challenged their statements. CBS News reported late last month that Iran’s military remains much more capable than Trump and Hegseth are claiming. After thirty-eight days of continuous largescale bombing strikes in which the US reportedly hit over 13,000 Iranian targets, the US was only successful in destroying thirty percent of Iranian missile launchers, forty percent of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy ships and one-third of its air force according to US intelligence officials.
Furthermore, a Central Intelligence Agency assessment prepared for President Trump last week assesses that Iran could likely successfully weather a US naval blockade for several months before it suffers a major economic impact while also estimating that Iran retains seventy-five percent of its prewar missile launchers and seventy percent of its missile stockpile nearly two months after President Trump misleadingly claimed the US had “destroyed one hundred percent of Iran’s military capability.”
A CIA assessment presented to Trump administration officials this week reportedly found that Iran still possesses roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile even after weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes. The Islamic regime also retains about 75% of its mobile launchers, according to a report from The Washington Post. An intelligence source familiar with the analysis confirmed its existence to The Daily Wire. American intelligence officials believe Tehran has managed to reopen underground storage facilities, repair damaged missiles, and continue assembling weapons that were near completion before the conflict began. Despite launching repeated attacks against Israel, neighboring Arab countries, and U.S. military sites in the region, much of that arsenal appears to remain intact.
The findings appear to conflict with comments President Donald Trump made on Wednesday, when he said Iran’s missile capabilities had been largely “decimated.” “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have some, they have probably 18, 19 percent,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Not a lot by comparison to what they had.” One U.S. official cited by the Post warned that Iran may be more capable of enduring a prolonged conflict than the CIA’s assessment suggests. “The leadership has gotten more radical, determined and increasingly confident they can outlast U.S. political will and sustain domestic repression to check any resistance” inside Iran, the official said. “Comparatively, you see similar regimes lasting years under sustained embargoes and airpower-only wars.” The CIA assessment also found Iran may be able to withstand the current U.S. naval blockade for several more months, though the restrictions have sharply reduced oil exports and strained the regime’s economy.
