Right-wing media hawks are floating a new wave of risky and at times bloodthirsty escalations after Iranian forces struck commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. retaliated by resuming military strikes, and President Donald Trump declared the long-shaky ceasefire with Iran “over.”

Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wants to “destroy 100 percent” of Iran’s defense industrial base and “set them back to the Stone Age militarily and then declare victory, open the strait by force, reimpose the blockade, and declare victory. And then help the Iranian people overthrow the regime.”

Newsmax host Carl Higbie is calling for “mass destruction” in Iran, including “a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike,” arguing, “That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages.”

Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade says Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz is their “new nuclear weapon” and the U.S. military is “going to have to take back the strait” (he also wants Vice President JD Vance and envoy Steve Witkoff pulled from the U.S. negotiating team). His co-host Lawrence Jones agrees about the strait, saying, “We have got to take it over and we have to send a message that they can no longer use this as a tool for political pressure.”

Fox contributor Paul Mauro argues that “I don't see how you get the straits open, rid of the IRGC, and the nuclear materials secreted in a way that we can definitely say it's all out of there, without” putting “boots on the ground” — and if we won’t do that, we should have a “decoupling” with Iran that leaves them in charge of the strait, since “we don’t need” the oil that passes through it.

Newsmax guest retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and Fox guest retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward are both calling for U.S. ground troops — Kellogg in order to take “very strategic targets in Iran” like Kharg Island and “the islands in the strait” and even stand up a “provisional government,” and Harward to send “the message to the population of Iran that America is serious and is going to finish this thing” and “easily control” swaths of Iranian territory.

Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, meanwhile, says that “a lot of people are fake hyperventilating about this war” when in reality, “It's not even a war. This is not full-scale combat. We don't have boots on the ground or anything like that.”

To sum up: The right-wing media hawks, having convinced Trump to launch an unprovoked and ill-conceived war of choice against Iran only for the regime to survive the attack with its nuclear status unchanged and very predictably respond by closing the strait and hobbling global trade, are scrambling for a way to avoid strategic defeat and at least make it back to status quo ante. We could have just not done any of this.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters