A retired top US general Friday said Iran’s leaders “certainly don’t care” what happens to their people — so President Trump should stop trying to negotiate and resume bombing the Middle Eastern country.
Retired Gen. Jack Keane — acting Army Chief of Staff at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — told Fox News that Iran’s merciless and violent crackdown on its own citizens show the leadership’s true colors and proves any negotiation is fruitless.
“They certainly don’t care about their people suffering,” Keane said, likely alluding to reports that Iran murdered nearly 40,000 of its own people while putting down protests in January alone, among other well-documented acts of mass violence.
“The people that think this is gonna cause a collapse and they’re gonna make a deal, I think they’re underestimating who these guys really are,” Keane said, referring to the freefall of Iran’s economy caused by the ongoing US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — which some have hoped would bring Iran to heel at the negotiating table.
Keane said that’s wishful thinking.
“We spent three weeks here trying to work something out with these guys,” he said. “What else are our options? I think option one Is return and finish what we started.”
Keane served in the US Army from 1966 to 2003, rising to vice chief of staff as a four-star general in 1999 and then acting chief of staff before he retired. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Trump in 2020, and helped coordinate US actions in the Middle East after 9/11.
His comments come as the US-Iran ceasefire dragged through its fourth week, with zero progress made in negotiations to end the war that started Feb. 28.
Iran has repeatedly refused to disavow its nuclear program — Trump’s no. 1 non-negotiable — and even no-showed and walked out of negotiation meetings during the ceasefire.
Keane said all that proves the “reality” that Iran can only be made to listen if Trump unleashes the might of the US military on Iran again.
“We can go through a list of targets — there’s leadership targets out there, there’s ballistic missiles out there, there’s the remnants of the nuclear weapons program that’s out there,” he said. “There’s drone storage, there’s energy infrastructure, etcetera.
“There’s plenty of targets that we have assigned that we want to finish.”
Iran’s malignant leadership could be heeled with bombs in just “two weeks” if Trump gave the order again, Keane predicted.
The Iran war — known officially as Operation Epic Fury — meanwhile started 60 days ago Friday, leaving the future of its legality in jeopardy as the president’s authority to use deadly force in the conflict may have expired.
The War Powers Act of 1973 allows presidents 60 days to carry out conflicts abroad, with any conflicts lasting longer requiring a declaration of war from Congress or other congressional authorization. Thirty-day extensions can also be filed, but only to withdraw US force.
But Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has dismissed the deadline, arguing the ongoing ceasefire — which started April 7 — paused the timeline.
It remains unclear how the White House will officially react to the 60-day mark.
The War Powers Act has been broken before: President Barack Obama continued actions against Libya through the 60-day deadline in 2011.
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