Analysis: War with Iran
Eight weeks of broken promises: Former Gen. Keane says it’s time to finish the job
Ret. Gen. Jack Keane, appearing on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. Monday morning, offered a blunt strategic assessment of the war with Iran conflict: eight weeks of ceasefire violations have exposed Tehran’s bad faith, diplomatic options are running thin, and the case for returning to full military operations is growing stronger.
The ceasefire that isn’t. The April 8 ceasefire was sold on a specific premise — Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz within a couple of weeks through negotiations. Eight weeks later, Keane said, the opposite has occurred. “Here we are, eight weeks, and they haven’t done that,” he told Varney. “Quite the contrary, they’ve been firing on ships passing through it.”
Rather than honoring the agreement, Tehran has continued firing on vessels transiting the strait, forcing the U.S. to defend against fast boats and drones. Every Iranian attempt has been knocked out, Keane noted, but the provocations continue.
The Lebanon front tells a parallel story. Despite a ceasefire in place there, Hezbollah has launched more than 2,000 rockets and drones into northern Israel, wounding more than 300 Israelis and forcing the evacuation of villages and towns. Then, overnight before Monday’s broadcast, Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles directly at Israel — an escalation of an entirely different magnitude.
Keane was direct about Israel’s position: it had no choice but to respond. “Any one of those getting through could kill hundreds of people,” he said, stressing that the lethality of a ballistic missile is “a major difference than a rocket, and certainly a drone.”
President Trump has appealed to both sides to stand down. The Israelis, Keane assessed, would likely comply if asked. The Iranians — based on eight weeks of evidence — almost certainly would not.
The case against a deal. Keane expressed skepticism not just about whether a deal can be reached, but about whether even a good deal would hold. His argument was structural, not tactical.
Even in a best-case scenario — Iranian nuclear material removed and transported to Oak Ridge as was done in Libya, proxy support terminated, ballistic missile and drone inventories reduced — Tehran would still demand something substantial in return. “They’re going to want money, lots of it,” Keane said. The regime would use that financial recovery to reconstitute itself, and then do what it has done for nearly five decades. “This is a regime, despite what they say and despite what they sign, that clearly cannot be trusted,” Keane said flatly.
The JCPOA serves as his primary exhibit. The Obama administration spent 18 months negotiating what Keane called “a lousy deal for the United States.” Tehran’s current strategy, in his reading, is to replicate that playbook — drag the negotiations out long enough that political dynamics shift in Washington. Specifically, Iran is watching the U.S. midterm election calendar closely, calculating that if talks extend close enough to the midterms, Trump would be politically constrained from re-attacking.
Keane thinks that’s a miscalculation. His evidence: before the 12-day war, Trump gave Iran a 60-day negotiating window. On day 61, he greenlighted the Israeli attack. “They underestimated the president then,” Keane said, “and I think they’re underestimating him again now.”
The military option. Keane’s preferred course is a return to full-scale military operations — a 10-to-14-day campaign targeting military and other strategic assets with the explicit goal of putting the regime on a pathway to collapse. “I have always believed that the preferred option is to go back to military operations, full scale, 10 to 14 days,” he said. “We’re going to go after military targets and other targets that will put the regime on a pathway to its collapse, and I think it really is the most realistic option.”
The intelligence picture, Keane argued, supports this. For eight weeks, U.S. and Israeli intelligence assets have been watching Iran rebuild. In a notable tactical detail, he described how the Iranians have excavated their deeply buried tunnel complexes — previously “rubbled” to prevent access — and moved ballistic missile launchers and missiles back out into the open. “We’ve been watching everything that’s going on in Iran,” Keane said. “We know what the targets are, we know where the leadership is. We also know where the missiles are, where the drones are. This return to military operation is going to be quite devastating for them.”
On the question of targeting the Revolutionary Guard leadership — Varney asked pointedly whether the intelligence to enable precision strikes still exists — Keane was measured. The leaders are not stupid, he acknowledged. “They have dug deeper and deeper and deeper to protect themselves.” But eight weeks of continuous surveillance has given the intelligence community significant situational awareness of what’s on the ground.
A divided Trump administration. On the question of whether there is strong internal pressure within the Trump administration to resume military operations, Keane was candid: the advisers are split. “A number of them want to see the negotiations take hold and not return to military operations,” he said. “There’s others that say the negotiations are futile, and we’re not going to get the deal we want anyway, and we should get on with it.” That internal division, Keane suggested, partly explains why the situation has remained in this ambiguous middle ground for two months.
Keane’s bottom line on Trump himself: the president has more information than the public does, and should be given credit for that. “I’m confident he’s not going to make a bad deal — that is a fact,” Keane said, calling that confidence itself a major obstacle for the Iranians, who need a weak American counterparty to execute their delay strategy. But patience has limits. “At some point when his patience runs out in dealing with this, we’ve got to go back to military operations and finish it once and for all.”
Note: Keane is a retired four-star general and regular Fox Business contributor. He also sits on the boards of two defense contractors — U.S. Antimony Corp. and REalloys Inc. — both of which supply materials to the Department of Defense for weapons and military equipment, a fact Fox has not disclosed to viewers during the conflict. That context is relevant when weighing his consistent and strong advocacy for military escalation over diplomatic resolution.
