Iran Defiantly Declares That There Will Be No Negotiations And Trump Is Refusing To Rule Out U.S. Boots On The Ground

It appears that both sides are settling in for a long conflict. The Iranians are making it clear that there will be no negotiations and no surrender. By now, the leaders of the regime are almost certainly holed up in very deep bunkers underneath hospitals, schools and other very sensitive targets in highly populated areas. They probably figure that if they can just weather the bombing for a few weeks they can emerge victorious at the end of the conflict and declare victory. The protesters in Iran are no match for the heavily-armed IRGC, and so it is unlikely that regime change will occur unless foreign troops enter the country. Iranian leaders are likely convinced that President Trump will never pull the trigger on such a move, but now Trump has publicly stated that he is refusing to rule out U.S. boots on the ground.

Even when Ayatollah Khamenei was still alive, Ali Larijani was essentially running things in Iran.

Now that Khamenei is gone, Larijani is very much in control, and he is defiantly declaring that there will be no negotiations with the United States…

Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani said that Tehran has no plans to engage in negotiations with the United States.

“We will not negotiate with the United States,” the former adviser to the late supreme leader said in a post on X, dismissing reports that it is seeking to restart negotiations with Washington.

Anyone that was hoping for a quick end to the war is going to be disappointed.

Larijani is accusing the U.S. and Israel of attempting to “plunder and disintegrate” Iran…

Ali Larijani, a close ally of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the blunt message on Sunday after announcing the formation of a provisional governing structure within hours of the airstrike that killed the supreme leader.

Larijani accused the United States and Israel of seeking to ‘plunder and disintegrate’ Iran and warned so-called ‘secessionist groups’ within his country.

He delivered a direct rebuke to President Donald Trump and warned: ‘We will not negotiate.’

‘Trump plunged the region into chaos with his “delusional fantasies” and now fears more American troop casualties,’ Larijani wrote on X.

It is true that the U.S. and Israel want to bring an end to the Islamic Republic.

Anything short of that will be a defeat for the U.S. and Israel.

So Larijani’s main goal is survival.

If he can keep the government together and the IRGC in control of the major cities until the end of the war, he wins.

And he fully understands that.

Interestingly, there are rumors that Larijani is attempting to install his own brother as the new supreme leader…

These are not good people, and they are going to do whatever it takes to make it through this.

In a desperate attempt to gain leverage with the rest of the world, the Iranians have decided to close down the Strait of Hormuz and they are vowing that they “will not allow a single drop of oil to leave the region”…

A senior Revolutionary Guards commander warned Tehran would target shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and strike oil infrastructure in the Middle East to prevent exports.

“Any ship that seeks to pass through the Strait of Hormuz we will set on fire,” Brigadier General Ebrahim Jabbari said in remarks carried by Iranian media on Monday.

“We will also attack oil pipelines and will not allow a single drop of oil to leave the region,” he said, adding that “oil prices will reach $200 in the coming days.”

I think that it is likely that they will be able to force the price of oil above $100 a barrel, but crossing the $200 threshold is probably a pipe dream.

We shall see what happens.

In the days ahead, there will almost certainly be a lot more attacks on oil infrastructure.

Earlier today, we learned that the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia was shut down after an attack by Iranian drones…

Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco shut its Ras Tanura refinery following a drone strike, an industry source said on Monday, after Tehran launched strikes across the region in response to the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

The Ras Tanura complex, on the kingdom’s Gulf coast, houses one of the Middle East’s largest refineries with a capacity of 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) and serves as a critical export terminal for Saudi crude oil.

Ras Tanura was shut as a precautionary measure, and the situation is under control, the source said. Two drones were intercepted at the facility, with debris causing a limited fire, the Saudi defense ministry’s spokesperson said on Al Arabiya TV, adding there were no injuries.

The Iranians are probably calculating that if they can put enough pressure on the global supply of oil that it will force the United States and Israel to cease their attacks.

But I don’t think that the U.S. and Israel are going to turn back now.

After months of planning, President Trump gave the order to go ahead with Operation Epic Fury at 3:38 PM on February 27th…

The U.S. war in Iran began Saturday, Feb. 28, with a “massive, overwhelming” strike that involved thousands of American servicemembers, hundreds of planes and two aircraft carriers, and hit more than a thousand targets across the country, the Pentagon’s top general told reporters.

The military received its “final go order” from President Donald Trump a day earlier on Feb. 27 at 3:38 p.m., Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference March 2.

Trump’s message to troops: “Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck,” Caine said, using the Pentagon’s operational name for the attack.

Trump knows that if the regime in Iran is still standing at the end of this war, it will be a major defeat for him.

So he is keeping his options open.

On Monday, he steadfastly refused to rule out sending U.S. troops into Iran during an interview with the New York Post…

President Trump told The Post Monday that he’s not ruling out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary” — adding that Operation Epic Fury was “way ahead of schedule” after taking out dozens of Tehran’s top officials.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said after launching strikes Saturday to decapitate Iran’s military and political leadership. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at a Monday morning Pentagon press conference that no American troops are currently inside Iran, though he also did not rule out the possibility.

President Trump is not stupid.

He knows that regime change in Iran is not going to be easy.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump ominously stated that we “haven’t even started hitting them hard” and he warned that the “big one is coming soon”…

I asked the president how long he thought this military operation or war might last. He said, quote, “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks and we’re a little ahead of schedule.” I asked a president if the U.S. was doing more than these military strikes to help the Iranian people regain control of Iran against the regime, to seize the country from the Iranian regime, and he said, yes, the president said, “Yes, we are indeed. But right now we want everyone staying inside. It’s not safe out there.” And then the president said, it’s about to get even less safe. He said, quote, “We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

What does Trump mean by that?

Perhaps we will soon find out.

Trump keeps telling us that he expects the war to last for four to five weeks, but he is fully prepared for it to go much longer than that if necessary…

President Donald Trump says the US has the capability to continue Iran strikes far longer than the five-week projection.

“From the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that, we’ll do it. Whatever somebody said today, they said, Oh, well, President wants to do it really quickly. After that, he’ll get bored. I don’t get bored.”

It is easy to take out stationary military targets that are above ground.

At this stage, U.S. Central Command is telling us that over 1,000 targets have already been destroyed…

While U.S. Central Command said more than 1,000 targets have already been wiped out and the White House has boasted of destroying most of the country’s top leadership, Iran has still managed to unleash a huge number of retaliatory attacks, reportedly alarming military officials.

Without a doubt, all of this bombing has made a big difference.

But as long as the IRGC has 125,000 heavily-armed members in control of the major cities, the regime will remain in power.

So yes, the United States and Israel are successfully bombing the living daylights out of targets all over Iran right now.

However, the truth is that this “final showdown” with Iran is far from over.

The Iranian regime is still very much alive, and they are going to do whatever they feel is necessary to survive.

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