President Trump on Wednesday night delivered his second televised address to the nation since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, touting the operation’s military success and trying to calm fears about high gas prices. However, the speech was widely panned for falling short of the president’s usual standard and will likely do little to rebuild the confidence of the American public.

“In these past four weeks, our Armed Forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield — victories like few people have ever seen before,” Trump declared. “Tonight, Iran’s navy is GONE. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them — the terrorist regime they led — are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core is being decimated as we speak.”

“Our objectives are very simple and clear. We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten America or project power outside their borders,” he added. “For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat. The most violent and thuggish regime on earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest, and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield. I will never let that happen.”

“Tonight, I am pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion,” Trump continued. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. … We have all the cards; they have none.”

“Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home,” the president acknowledged. “This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons.”

“In a rambling, disjointed speech, an unhinged President failed to justify his disastrous decision to go to war with Iran,” gloated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). MS Now contributor Paul Waldman called the speech “oddly low-energy” and accused it of “missing” a “case for war.” The Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols wondered aloud, “Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech.”

Of course, President Trump’s many critics can usually be counted on to present his performance in the worst possible light.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) offered the opposite opinion on “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I thought the president’s speech … was needed,” he said. “A lot of people around the country don’t remember the decades — not years, but decades — of violence that Iran has committed against America, going back to taking our embassy, killing hundreds of American troops, being behind Hezbollah, Hamas, major terrorist organizations, and then ultimately working towards a nuclear weapons program.”

In reality, Trump’s speech was largely correct on the substance. While Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari claimed that the regime’s military production capabilities remain intact, its air defenses have been so utterly destroyed that the U.S. has begun flying B-52 bombers over Iran.

First flown in 1955, the slow and non-stealthy strategic bomber is something of a “glass cannon” today, both highly vulnerable and highly dangerous. Rep. Scott Perry, a former brigadier general, called the plane “old, but a very strategic asset, [with] devastating firepower in the payload that it carries.”

“That’s a warning to Iran, but it’s also a signal to the entire world of our dominance,” he said on “Washington Watch.” “Because we’re not going to fly those old planes and jeopardize them if we think that Iran has the capability of shooting one of them down. So, I think that’s a signal to China, to Russia, to North Korea, to all of our adversaries that this is way ahead of schedule. It’s going as perfectly as any military operation has ever gone.”

But the most important weapon of the Iranian regime is not a military branch, nor its defensive systems, but its missile arsenal, which the U.S. military is still working to destroy.

“I would say they still have some ballistic missiles. They still have some drones. I don’t think they have a capability to produce many more,” Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bob Maginnis, FRC senior fellow for National Security, estimated on “Washington Watch.” “Hegseth and the Pentagon have indicated that their campaign is not complete, that they’re going after the remnants of those ballistic missiles and drones and other capabilities that the Iranians have.”

These missiles and drones are part of the reason why Iran can go on threatening oil tankers traversing the Strait of Hormuz, even after every vessel in their surface fleet was destroyed. But Trump’s threatened destruction of Iran’s oil industry has forced the regime to allow a limited number of tankers through.

“Obviously, that’s their primary, life-sustaining economic outlet to the rest of the world,” said Maginnis. “To accomplish that, he’s brought in thousands of Marines and portions of the 82nd Airborne with the idea — that’s been floated — that we would take over Kharg Island, which is where most of their oil is put on tankers. … I would imagine that those that are still in charge [in Iran] see that economic disaster.”

Officially, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected America’s 15-point plan to end the war as “largely excessive, unrealistic and unreasonable” demands. And Pakistan hosted “peace talks” on the Iran conflict that included representatives from Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but none of the combatants — suggesting agreement remains remote.

However, the Trump administration is telling a different story. “Despite all of the public posturing you hear from the regime and false reporting, talks are continuing well,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “What is said publicly is, of course, much different than what’s being communicated to us privately.”

In fact, President Trump announced Wednesday that “Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear.”

Iran’s newly promoted leaders have good reason to reevaluate their posture toward the United States. “The decapitation [campaign] that started on the 28th of February continued and even arguably continues today,” Maginnis mentioned. “Those that are truly in charge are certainly tertiary to the original regime.”

“Who are Iran’s leaders at this point?” asked Perry. “I’m really not sure what that looks like.” Trump said he is negotiating with Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf, although Ghalibaf officially denies a role in any negotiations.

Whoever the leaders are, “I would argue that they have some control. After all, the president has made it very clear that this group that we’re negotiating with have been able to allow transport tankers to exit the Persian Gulf without harassment,” said Maginnis. “It sounds as if we’re making progress. And perhaps … remnants of the old administration are left in place, but they’re … going to be at least tolerable to the rest of the Middle East.”

In President Trump’s speech, Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) offered on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” he “did an excellent job of, first of all, setting some parameters, letting people know that it’s … nearing a conclusion — and I think that’s accurate — but also letting the regime know that they’ll determine when it’s over. They’ll determine it by their actions — and that the bombing will stop when we get a deal.”