Trump and his Board of Peace expand threats as US runs out of targets in Iran

(Originally published Apr. 7 in “What in the World“) U.S. astronauts broke the record for getting the farthest away any human ever has from Earth. Lucky bastards.

The Orion spacecraft, with its four passengers, on Monday flew 400,171 kilometers away from our planet as it circled behind the moon. Its path took it beyond the farthest distance reached in the nearly catastrophic 1970 Apollo 13 mission, depicted in the 1995 Hollywood film, “Apollo 13.”

Back on Earth, Trump continued to wreak havoc, on Monday widening his Sunday threat against Iran if it fails to re-open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday night, to include every bridge and power plant in the country:

“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again… If the attacks take place, it will take them 100 years to rebuild.”

Rebuilding U.S. arsenals, and its coffers, may also require a long, if not quite so lengthy, period. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) estimates the war has cost the U.S. up to $31 billion in its first five weeks, which includes roughly $3.6 billion in equipment that has been damaged or destroyed. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the war is costing the U.S. $500 million a day and lost $1.4 billion in damaged or destroyed equipment in just the first six days.

So maybe the U.S. won’t bomb “every” power plant in the country, which is a war crime. Instead, the Pentagon has cherry-picked plants that supply power to military sites as well as civilians, making them legitimate “dual-use” targets. Why start putting Iran’s people in the dark? Because Tehran still hasn’t surrendered after five weeks of non-stop airstrikes against military sites and Trump is running out of targets.

Trump’s “Board of Peace,” meanwhile, leveled a Trumpesque threat against Hamas, warning it to demilitarize Gaza by the end of the week or face “grave consequences.” “He who will not cross the river will drown in the sea,” the Board’s Bulgarian envoy to Gaza, Nikolay Mladenov, posted.

Israel on Sunday and Monday continued its own airstrikes in Iran, saying it killed two senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Tehran, as well as several airports used by the IRGC. It also mounted airstrikes in Lebanon in its campaign against Iran-backed militia Hezbollah there, killing at least 39 people.