Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane said enough with the diplomatic charade — Iran is stalling for time and the best solution is to resume full-scale war.
The chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and former Army vice chief of staff on Friday blasted eight weeks of fruitless talks as a waste while the mullahs play games.
“We have to accept the reality that’s just not going to happen,” Keane said on Fox News. “They have one motive: stretch out negotiations as much as possible, get as close to the political situation in terms of midterm elections, and there will be less likelihood that President Trump would ever pull the trigger and go back to military operations. I believe that is their unstated strategy.”
Even if a deal somehow was inked, Keane warned it would be worthless — and dangerously so.
“We can’t throw them a financial lifeline… because then they’ll systematically reverse everything,” he said. “They’ve always cheated in the past, and they’ll cheat in the future.”
Still, he championed Trump’s decision to launch the war on Feb. 28 — but said the job isn’t over yet.
“Look, in close to 50 years, only one president has taken consequential action against Iran and their predator behavior — and that’s President Trump,” Keane said. “Five weeks of Epic Fury and a naval blockade devastated this regime militarily and economically. They’re down, but they’re not out.”
When operations paused, the IDF and US Central Command had about two weeks left to finish the job, the general said. Now, after eight weeks of watching the Iranians try to recover, the US has even more targets and better intelligence.
“If we go back to military operations — and I believe that’s the preferred option — we should return to full combat operations,” Keane said.
He shot down any talk of limited strikes just to send a message.
“Iran is going to retaliate regardless of whether you go small or go big. Let’s go big,” he said. “Take down as much of their capability as we possibly can and get these guys as close to collapse as military operations can possibly achieve.”
“And then with economic pressure, we can put this regime truly on the path to collapse.”
It comes as some US military sources told The Post that a full-out approach eliminating Iran’s most influential hardliners may be necessary, as they quietly doubt more military action would pressure the regime to make necessary changes.
That’s largely due to the stubborn nature of hardliner politicians, as well as the ideology of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is more allegiant to the “Islamic revolution” than nationalism and the needs of the Iranian people.
Such an attack would require Israeli support for “decapitation strikes,” one of the sources said, while the US would focus efforts on any remaining weapons facilities and launch locations, as well as other targets hugging the Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli leadership has quietly voiced support for a return to combat, as Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu openly called for regime change Thursday in an interview with CNBC.
“We’ve wreaked a lot of damage to this regime, not destroyed it, but weakened it. We see the cracks propagating in the regime,” he said. “We have to help the Iranian people to bring down this regime, and that hasn’t changed.”
