One way to escape the madness engulfing the planet is to jump into a rocket ship and issue Frank Sinatra’s old instruction of fly me to the moon. But if the crew of the US mission destined to fly around the moon carried expectations that the war with Iran will be all done and dusted by the time they re-enter Earth’s orbit, their hopes were dashed if they caught, on satellite, any of president Donald Trump’s formal address to the nation, delivered at 9pm eastern standard time.
The presidential address was, in the end, a rehash of the vague reasoning and unclear objectives that have defined the Trump administration’s explanations for its war with Iran, when the president hinted that although objectives had been all but achieved and the end is “very close”, the bombing will continue.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” Trump warned.
It was reported that the sirens sounded in the early hours across the Gulf to warn of Iranian drone strikes incoming.
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The sky around Cape Canaveral on Wednesday was clear for a launch redolent of the starry-eyed days of US space exploration, with Artemis II carrying a four-person crew on a 10-day mission around the moon, the first of its kind since Apollo 17 launched in December 1972, when Don MacLean’s American Pie was the soundtrack of winter, Richard Nixon was in the White House and Donald Trump was a young real estate developer whose family firm was under investigation by the FBI for a housing discrimination case.
That was then. As the crowd at the Florida Nasa launch gazed heavenwards, Trump looked directly at the camera and delivered a 19-minute homily from the lectern in the flat monotone of a bored public reader that contained little new about the likely outcome to the war with Iran or how the spiralling global energy crisis will end.
Official presidential addresses are an exercise in nostalgia in their own right; a throwback to the analogue age and the idiot box as the family-gathering point. But it still serves the purpose of signalling to Americans that its leader has something vital and important to announce. Wednesday night’s speech was simply a more formal version of Trump’s daily riffs in which the reasons for joining Israel in obliterating Iran became more obscure and the time line for an ending less certain.
“I did what no other president was willing to do,” he told the nation.
“They made mistakes and I am correcting them. They [Iran] had some weapons that nobody believed they had. We just learned that, we took them out, we took them all out so that no one would really dare stop them and their race for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before. They were right at the doorstep. For years everybody has said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But in the end those are just words if you are not willing to take action when the time comes.”
Although he refrained from the overt attacks on Nato and his stinging rebukes of European allies for failing to support the attacks on Iran, he once again invited those countries most dependent on oil and gas sourced from the Middle East to seize the day and make safe the Strait of Hormuz themselves.
“They must grab it and cherish it. We will be helpful but they must take the lead in protecting the oil which they depend on. And so to those countries that can’t get fuel ... I have a suggestion: buy oil from the United States of America – we have plenty. We have so much.
“And number two, build up some delayed courage – should have done it before, should have done it when we asked – and go to the strait and just take it. Protect it. Use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially done so it should be easy. But in any event when this is done, the strait will just open up naturally because it’s all they have. They are going to want to sell oil.”
As for the huge question over whether Trump would use US troops to seek to obtain the “nuclear dust” or 400kg of enriched uranium in the tunnels beneath the obliterated Isfahan military complex, the president indicated that it was no longer a priority.
“It would take months to get near the nuclear dust and we have that under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move, we will hit them very hard with missiles again.”
The address offered no hint of what a future Iran leadership might look like. It dismissed the idea of US troops going after the nuclear materials that the Iranians might one day use to produce nuclear capabilities. Trump didn’t mention anything of the independent war aims of its partner in war, Israel, nor any solace for US allies in the Gulf beyond a general thank you.
A week ago, Trump suggested that the Strait of Hormuz might be run by himself and the ayatollah, “whoever the ayatollah is”. Now he feigned indifference to who controls it once the US military operation concludes. Nothing about US responsibility for the death of more than 160 schoolchildren in the opening hours of the war. Nothing to the Iranian people who protested against their regime in the early weeks of the year. Nothing about the mass displacement of villagers in southern Lebanon pummelled by Israeli missiles.
The main purpose of this address was to quell mounting domestic anxiety about the price hikes Americans are seeing in their petrol stations. Trump has now beaten Joe Biden (68 per cent) and Jimmy Carter (66 per cent) in disapproval ratings on inflation, with 72 per cent expressing disapproval in a new CNN poll. The news was worse on gas prices, at 76 per cent.
To this, Trump offered soothing words about prices falling and the economy “roaring back like never before” while also invoking historical precedent by way of telling the public to climb into its big-boy pants. He listed out the lengths of previous US military overseas engagements. The second World War was three years, eight months and 25 days. Vietnam was 19 years, five months and 29 days. America’s war with Iran, he told them flatly, has been going on “for 32 days”.
“The whole world is watching and they can’t believe the power, strength and brilliance. They just can’t believe what they are seeing.”
That might have been true about the spectacle that unfolded a few hours earlier in Florida. Because how cool and beautiful was that rocket ship against the blue sky. The launch offered the one pure moment of uncomplicated optimism of the second Trump presidency.
It was inevitable the build-up to the Nasa event would be overshadowed by the US president because that’s the nature of the administration. But the sight of the four-person crew in their space suits retains the power to humble. The audio sound between ground control and the rocket is still wonderfully crackly and indistinct, as though Nasa had thrown the entire budget into the rocket and had to pick up a walkie-talkie set at Walmart.
“This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity,” one of the astronauts said.
“Artemis II crew is go for launch.”
God speed.
