Khamenei Revives “The Great Satan” as Trump’s Iran War Rages On
Iran’s supreme leader declared the president’s name on paper meaningless the same weekend two more American service members came home in coffins.
A signature Tehran says is worth nothing
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a written statement Saturday declaring that repeated American violations of the memorandum of understanding signed by both presidents had proven how worthless and unreliable the signature of the U.S. president is.
In the same statement, carried by Iranian state media, he described bullying, hegemonic ambition, and brutality as inseparable elements of the American way, and he did it while invoking a phrase Iranian leadership had shelved for the duration of the negotiations.
Khamenei called the United States “the Great Satan,” a term Axios reported he had not used since assuming office, marking a deliberate return to the revolutionary vocabulary of the 1980s.
The rhetorical rollback is not decoration. It is Tehran announcing that the diplomatic track President Donald Trump spent months advertising as a triumph is finished, and that the man who signed it is not considered a party worth negotiating with.
Two more American families got the call
Hours before the statement circulated, U.S. Central Command confirmed that two American service members in Jordan were killed and one remains missing after Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks on July 17. Four other troops were medically evacuated to hospitals in Jordan and have since been discharged, and CENTCOM said it would withhold the names of the dead until families were notified.
The deaths bring the American military toll in Trump’s Iran war to sixteen, according to reporting on the strike at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a facility that hosts U.S. troops and fighter jets.
Hundreds more troops have been injured since fighting began on February 28. These are the first American deaths from direct Iranian fire since March, and they arrived during a week in which the administration insisted the situation was under control.
The deal Trump said would end the war
The interim agreement Khamenei now dismisses was signed roughly a month ago and was sold to the American public as the conflict’s off-ramp. It did not survive the summer.
Trump sent Congress a formal notification dated July 10 that hostilities had resumed, a letter the administration appears to treat as the start of a new 60-day window for military action without congressional approval, despite the ceasefire both governments signed on June 17.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, told state television that Washington had broken its commitments first and that Tehran is no longer implementing the deal.
Central Command said its seventh consecutive night of strikes hit surveillance sites, logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities, part of a campaign increasingly concentrated on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that once carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil.
At 6pm EST on July 18, Central Command announced a new round of strikes was underway.
Civilians are paying for the escalation
Iran’s Health Ministry reported Saturday that at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 injured in American strikes this month. Among the targets was a desalination facility, and the resulting damage left 10,000 people without water.
Tehran has accused Washington of deliberately striking civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes, and the destroyed bridges, rail lines and water plants documented by Iranian state media give those accusations more traction than the White House would like.
There is also a plainly stated political clock behind the bombing. Trump is racing to bring down oil and gas prices ahead of the November midterms, and his escalation has so far failed to bring Iran back to the table at all.
Americans in uniform are being killed in service of a strategy whose most measurable deadline is an election.
Congress said stop. Republicans made sure it did not matter.
This is not a war Congress authorized. Both chambers have formally told the president to end it. The Senate passed the House measure 50 to 48, with four Republicans joining nearly every Democrat, after the House cleared it 215 to 208.
Trump responded by dismissing the vote as meaningless and accusing the senators who backed it of helping the enemy.
Senate Republicans control the chamber and have spent months shielding the president from any binding constraint.
Senator Adam Schiff of California filed a fresh war powers resolution after the ceasefire collapsed, telling TIME that Americans were promised the war would be over months ago and had instead gotten more strikes, another naval blockade and higher prices.
Sixteen dead service members, a broken agreement, a closed waterway and a supreme leader publicly declaring the president’s word worthless. That is the record congressional Republicans have chosen to protect rather than check.
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