‘Take the oil’: Did Trump REVEAL his Iran war strategy decades ago? POTUS shares interview clip from 1987 | Watch video

Thirty-eight years ago, a 41-year-old Donald Trump, on camera, disclosed his strategy against Iran, and the world remained blind to it, till now. In an old interview, the now-US president said, plainly, that the United States should sail into Iranian waters and take their oil. This week, with American forces actively engaged in a war with Iran, Trump posted that clip himself. In the clip, Trump can be heard pushing for an aggressive strategy against Iran's oil infrastructure: "You go in... you take the oil... Let Iran fight their own war. You take their oil".

Grab it, keep it: Trump disclosed his Iran oil strategy almost four decades ago

In December 198,7 when Iran was targeting oil tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq War, a young Donald Trump gave an interview to Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20. The businessman's strategy for dealing with Iranian aggression was characteristically blunt: "Why couldn't we go in and take over some of their oil, which is along the sea?" When Walters pushed back on the risks, escalation, and military entanglement, he didn't blink. "You go in... you take the oil... Let Iran fight their own war."

He went further. If Iran attacked the US again, Trump argued, the response should be to seize one of their major oil installations and keep it. "Grab it and keep it, and get back your losses," he said. "You get in trouble with weakness."

He even waved off concerns about Soviet intervention: "I don't think they would."

Watch it here:

Why did Trump share the video now?

The fact that Trump chose to share this clip now, in the middle of an active conflict, feels less like nostalgia and more like a statement of intent. Or at minimum, a reminder that his approach to Iran hasn't fundamentally changed in nearly four decades.

It comes as in a separate Truth Social post, the POTUS said negotiations were underway with what he described as a "more reasonable" faction within Iran's new leadership, and that progress toward ending military operations had been made. However, the olive branch came wrapped in a threat.

If a deal isn't reached shortly, and if the Strait of Hormuz isn't reopened, Trump said the US would "blow up and completely obliterate" Iran's electrical generating plants, oil wells, and Kharg Island — the country's main crude export hub. "We will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island," he said.

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