The President says so!

Donald Trump used a prime time address to the nation on Wednesday evening to declare the month-long war in Iran a success “nearing completion”, despite a spiraling conflict that has caused economic turmoil across the globe, fractured transatlantic alliances and eroded the president’s approval ratings.

In remarks from the White House, Trump argued that the US’s “little journey” to Iran had nearly accomplished “all of America’s military objectives”, but offered little clarity on how he planned to wind down the conflict over the next “two to three weeks”.

“We are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world,” Trump said in the 19-minute speech, delivered from Cross Hall of the White House. “We have all the cards. They have none.”

If you believe that, you are so gullible you probably voted for Trump.

A lot of people with a lot of money didn’t believe him, since the S&P 500 declined in real time over the course of the speech.

(I do wish to complain: not basing the Y-axis on zero tells me this segment of the chart was selected to emphasize the drop.)

So what’s next?

Ticking through a list of claimed achievements, Trump said Iran’s navy and air force had been decimated, leaving the country weak and “no longer a threat” to the US and the world. He, however, said the US would continue to hit Iran “extremely hard” for next several weeks.

“We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” he said, even as he said “discussions were ongoing”.

The war is nearly over, so now is the time to throw even more bombs, and the goal is to send a nation of over 90 million people back to the stone age. That’s not a reasonable conclusion, and says we aren’t at all interested in the welfare of the citizens of Iran. More bombs also won’t rescue his terrible poll numbers with the citizens of the USA, which is his real goal.