Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of US politics for the day, but for updates on the US war on Iran, please visit our Middle East crisis live blog. Here are the days developments:
Donald Trump order the US military to bomb military targets on Kharg Island, a vital oil transit point for 90% of Iran’s oil exports, and threatned to attack oil infrastructure if Iran does not re-open the strait of Hormuz.
Trump told the Guardian in a 1988 interview he was reminded of by Fox News on Friday that, should he ever become US president: “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”
Twice on Friday, vice-president JD Vance cited secrecy to dodge questions about claims by unnamed administration officials that he is “skeptical” about or even opposed to the war on Iran.
Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, called on the justice department to drop what he called the “weak and frivolous” criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, after a federal judge blocked a justice department subpoena of Powell on Friday.
In the midst of armed hostilities with Iran in a war he started, Trump found time on Friday to concern himself with what he apparently considers a pressing issue: who will run the Kennedy Center, the living memorial to John F Kennedy created by Congress that Trump added his name to, while it is closed for renovations.
Trump told the Guardian in 1988: 'I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.'
Thirty six years before Donald Trump ordered military strikes on Iran’s vital oil hub, Kharg island, he told the Guardian that he would attack the island if he ever became president and Iran fired even one bullet at an American.
In a 1988 interview with the Guardian, which Trump was reminded of during a Fox News interview on Friday morning, Polly Toynbee, now a Guardian columnist, asked the businessman what his platform would be if he ever did run for president.
“Respect,” Trump replied.
“We’re a second rate economic power, a debtor nation. We’re getting kicked around,” he added.
When Toynbee asked him what he would do about Iran, Trump replied:
I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it. Iran can’t even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around. It’d be good for the world to take them on.
Seven years before that interview, the New York Times and other outlets had reported that Pentagon invasion plans for Iran drawn up during the 1979 hostage crisis started with an attack on Kharg Island.
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