UNITED STATES PERSPECTIVE

Washington spent June 10 saying one thing and its opposite. At the White House, Donald Trump claimed to hold a 'fully negotiated deal' with Tehran — 'all they have to do is sign a paper' — while launching a second wave of strikes and promising more: 'We hit them hard yesterday, we're going to hit them hard again today.' On Truth Social he went further: 'The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They've taken too long to negotiate, now they will have to pay the price.' The same president told Fox News he could target Iranian 'bridges and power plants,' a threat against civilian infrastructure. The trigger remains the downing of an Apache helicopter near Hormuz, blamed on Iran. CENTCOM cast the operation as 'a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,' hitting air defenses, ground-control stations and radar. But US coverage flags the dissonance: an official quoted by CNN describes the strikes as a mere 'warning shot' meant not to jeopardize talks, while Trump reveals 'for the first time' that the military is pulling 'millions of barrels of oil' out of Iran every night. The financial press tallies the damage: oil climbs, US strategic reserves fall to their lowest in more than forty years, and gold slips. At home, May inflation at 4.2% and gasoline above $4 turn the war into a cost-of-living problem six months out from the midterms — even conservative columnists call it bad news for Republicans.