Retired four-star Army Gen. Jack Keane predicted on Fox News on Tuesday that President Donald Trump would have to resume combat operations against Iran, one way or another.

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum welcomed Keane to her program and began the interview by asking about military leaders saying earlier in the day that the ceasefire continues to hold. “You’ve got 10 attacks against U.S. Forces, two ships taken, but it doesn’t meet the threshold to return, to end the ceasefire, essentially?” she began.

Keane replied, “Well, I think what he’s saying, the interaction has taken place at the Straits. We’re conducting a defensive operation, so we did expect to be attacked, and we’re defending against that. But I think there are two notable exceptions to that. Number one, they’re now attacking our allies in the region. That is not something that’s taken place in the Strait. I think that’s clearly a violation of the ceasefire agreement. The second.”

MacCallum clarified, “The UAE attacks.”

“The UAE, they’ve come back for a second attack. The second thing is, if you attack a U.S. warship, nothing is going to be the same after that. Because we’re not just going to conduct a defensive attack against you, we’re going to punish you for attacking a warship. We’re not going to wait until you hit that warship and kill some of our sailors. We’re going to make certain that this thing is off limits. And that is the exception in my book,” Keane argued.

MacCallum followed up, “Alright, so how do you see this? You know, a few days back we were talking about resuming of talks. We hear Araghshidhi, the foreign prime minister—the Foreign Minister, I should say, of Iran—saying that the Pakistanis have been wonderful and, you know, lots of blah blah, essentially at this point. Are there actually negotiations that are still going on that you can tell?”

“Well, it is likely that what has always been going on is some discussion with our negotiating team and some of their emissaries involved in negotiations. And I think they have always operated in the reality that, listen, the objective here, after getting—closing down the Straits and we go to a ceasefire—the object then was to drag that ceasefire out as much as possible. And how do they do that? By promising that they’re going to make some concessions,” Keane said, adding:

And now our negotiators hear those words and go back to the president and say, “Look, this thing looks like it may happen.” And you heard him say publicly, “Look, these guys really want a deal.” I think that has always been part of their negotiating strategy. With the Obama administration over the nuclear—18 months they drag this thing out.

They’re really good at this. They lie to our faces about what they may want to make concessions of, and then all of a sudden we’re sitting down, we fly all the way out there, eighteen hours of sitting across from the guy. Okay, we hit one to hear the consent on. All we have to check with somebody else, and somebody else says “No, no deal.” So the president is on to this, and he knows full well—I mean, I call him. He’s our stop-back measure because he is not going to accept a bad deal.

And that’s the reality of it, nor are they going to give us any deal that would meet his objectives, Martha. And I think that’s where we are. The singular objective with the leaders who are running Iran today—it’s not the president of Iran, he’s sidelined; it is not the foreign minister, he is sidelined, it’s not that they’re not having voices, but the guys who are now running the place are the ones in charge.

The guy who’s in charge is Ahmed Vahidi. And he is in regular consultation with the Ayatollah’s son, who is now the Ayatollah. And that’s the reality of it. And he has one singular objective in mind right now, and that is to survive—for he and his leaders to survive this, and at some point they believe they’ll recover. That is their objective. And that is why I think even a blockade, which is an incredibly good decision on the part of the president, opening up the Straits of Hormuz, another good decision on the part of the president.

But at the end of the day, these guys are still thinking about surviving. And as much as the blockade shutting down 100% of their imports, exports—excuse me—is going to punish them and put them in economic peril, these diabolical, tyrannical leaders are willing to absorb that. When you look at it through our prism of values and reason, none of that makes any sense. But from their perspective is where you have to look at it. That’s why our intelligence guys are so valuable, because they actually put themselves through—how are they thinking, as opposed to looking at it through our thinking.

I think that’s where they are. But right now, we have momentum. We got the blockade going. We’re opening up the Straits of Hormuz by force because, obviously, negotiations couldn’t achieve that. I think we’re likely going to go into more full-scale combat operations as well as the Iranians continue to up the game here.

Keane also told Fox Business on Tuesday that a return to combat operations was “inevitable.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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