UPDATE: A cease-fire, at least for two weeks, and potentially an end to the war.

ORIGINAL: It’s long been said that you should take Trump seriously rather than literally. That’s perhaps never been more true than in the case of something Trump said last night regarding tonight’s 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face very dire consequences…

When he talks about taking out a whole civilization, understand what he means.

Talk to Iranian dissidents and particularly Iranian expatriates and they will often call themselves Persians rather than Iranians. They reject Iran as a separate civilization that has been imposed on Persia by the Twelver Shia death cult the ayatollahs represent.

So when Trump talks about wiping out a civilization, he’s signaling that tonight’s airstrikes will be aimed at crippling the regime/imposed civilization in that country and giving the people the opportunity to finish it off.

All of that said, my guess is what he’s really going to do is seal off the southern coast of Iran from the rest of the country so that they can’t affect the Srrait of Hormuz. And he might very well either take out Kharg Island (we’re bombing it now) or send in the Marines to occupy it.

Without the oil revenue flowing through Kharg Island that regime can’t exist for much longer. It is their economic jugular vein. The regime will collapse under its own weight without the revenue from the two million barrels of oil a day processed and loaded at Kharg Island.

What’s debatable is whether four hours of airstrikes would finish off the regime, or so cripple it that its viability is put to bed.

There is clearly already a power struggle within the regime between various factions, with two (and there are likely many more) including whichever group the Trump administration is negotiating with, and the hardliners of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps who insist that no such negotiations are being had.

Although a day or so ago, a bombing raid apparently knocked out several dozen of the IRGC’s top brass when they met in a Tehran bunker complex that was taken out with a Massive Ordinance Penetrator dropped from a B-2.

In any event, Trump is talking about ending their regime and the ideology they espoused. Much in the way you could say Nazi Germany was a civilization imposed on Germany, or the Soviet Union was a civilization imposed on Russia.

Now, that’s very ambitious and whether he can carry it off is a question.

But he isn’t talking about genocide. He’s talking about regime change in a way designed to get the most attention he can.

And another aspect of taking Trump seriously but not literally is that his statements here are not aimed at domestic arguments. Trump is using public statements as part of his negotiating strategy, as he very frequently (if not always) does.

His threats to dismantle critical infrastructure like power plants and bridges – which every stupid leftist in the West is insisting is a “war crime,” on the same day that Ukraine literally knocked out a Russian bridge – might very well be Trump creating strategic unpredictability (playing the bad cop) in order to give his negotiators leverage.

Because this is happening…

Shehbaz Sharif is the Pakistani Prime Minister. He’s currently the go-between attempting to broker an end to the war.

Earlier today, the Iranian government put out a statement on X which declared that all negotiations were off the table. They’ve since deleted that post and are now boasting about the supposed “14 million” Iranians who’ve volunteered to stand on bridges and to ring power plants as human shields warding off U.S. airstrikes.

When it’s as or more likely that Trump’s threats about power plants and bridges are a strategic feint in advance of a raid on Kharg Island or some other objective.

Or, again, that this whole exercise is a leverage play in advance of negotiations taking place in Islamabad.

Either way, if you’re reading his statements about killing a civilization as some sort of threat of nuclear annihilation, et cetera, you clearly aren’t paying attention to how Trump operates. That isn’t what’s going on.