Ex-GOP Honcho Says Trump Should Drop ‘A Dozen’ Nukes on Strait of Hormuz

(Sipa via AP Images)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) shared an explosive idea to re-open the Strait of Hormuz that has been essentially closed to shipping by Iranian attacks and mines.

The narrow passageway is the conduit for up to 30% of the world’s total oil consumption and 20% of global liquefied natural gas.

Although he hasn’t been seen in public since becoming Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei vowed in a written statement to use the “lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz” to keep the enemy “highly vulnerable”.

President Donald Trump has urged allies — like France, South Korea, Japan, and the UK — as well as China, to send warships to the Strait to police the area and keep it open for oil shipments.

But Gingrich posited that it would be much better to open the Strait with a nuclear attack.

“Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever,” Gingrich wrote, “we cut a new channel through friendly territory.”

“A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks,” Gingrich wrote.

Gingrich’s post linked to an article that a community note called “satirical,” but Gingrich didn’t mention the humor angle in his post.

Since the Iran strikes began, the U.S. Navy reported that 20 commercial vessels have been targeted in the Strait, causing seven fatalities, and four crew members to go missing.

One of the reasons given by the Trump administration for striking Iran in the first place was to avoid nuclear war by stopping the Islamic State from producing nuclear warheads.

Although Trump insisted the U.S. destroyed Iran’s ability to produce nuclear bombs with airstrikes last June, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe that up to 20 canisters of Iran’s highly-enriched uranium is still attainable even under the rubble at Isfahan.

The New York Times reported, “If President Trump ends the war without getting control of the canisters, Iran will almost certainly speed toward going nuclear. Grabbing it, on the other hand, would entail huge risk and the inevitable deployment of American or Israeli ground forces.”

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