💬 “I think it’s going very well. It’s very powerful,” Trump said. “We’ve got the greatest military in the world and we’re using it.”

💬 “We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” Trump said. “The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

"Trump's gift to the people of Iran" in the caption.

💬 “Mosaic defense is a long-standing Iranian strategy, adopted in the 2000s amid the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the onset of the first crisis around Iran’s nuclear program,” says veteran Russian military observer Yury Lyamin.

💬 This assault, in the middle of a second negotiation process, must torpedo the chances of the Iranian regime ever taking a US offer of talks seriously," Guardian diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour wrote. "They have been stung twice."

💬

"We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12 months, and in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of negotiation," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi told ABC News. "That has become a very bitter experience for us."

💬 “As is international law,” he added.

💬 "The only area where one can currently engage with the Americans is the question of the economic benefits—or lack thereof—of serious military conflicts," Mikhailov notes.

💬 "We and the Americans are two strategic nuclear powers that, since the mid-20th century, have divided the world into spheres of influence—and we continue to exist in this framework on a kind of superstructure," Mikhailov says.

💬 "The Americans find it advantageous to keep Ukraine as a factor destabilizing Russia’s borders, and more broadly, as a lever of pressure on Russia," the pundit says.