WASHINGTON, D.C. – US President Donald Trump said plans for a war with Iran were originally “scheduled for four to five weeks,” adding that the US military has “capabilities far beyond that.”
Speaking from the White House on Monday, President Trump reiterated that the U.S. attack on Iran last June led to the “annihilation of Iran’s nuclear program,” but said Iran posed a “grave threat” to the United States and outlined his administration’s rationale for going to war with Israel along with Israel.
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President Trump also said that Iran’s ballistic missile program is “growing rapidly and dramatically, posing a very clear and enormous threat to the United States and our military forces overseas.”
“The administration already has missiles capable of hitting our bases in Europe and at home and abroad, and will soon have missiles capable of reaching our beautiful United States,” Trump said, repeating the administration’s repeated assertions in the run-up to Saturday’s attack, but U.S. officials offered no evidence of that.
The statement is significant, as it appears President Trump has pivoted from his assertion that Iran poses an imminent threat to the United States. Instead, he characterized the Iranian government as potentially posing a long-term threat.
“The purpose of this burgeoning missile program was to protect their nuclear weapons development and make it extremely difficult for anyone to prevent them from building nuclear weapons, which we strictly prohibit,” President Trump said.
“The Iranian regime, armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, would pose an intolerable threat not only to the Middle East but also to the American people,” President Trump said.
“Our country itself would be threatened, and it was on the verge of being threatened,” Trump said.
Under both U.S. domestic law and international law, an attack on a foreign country must be in response to an imminent threat. Under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can declare war, and the president can act unilaterally in response to an imminent threat.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks, President Trump has released two video speeches, including one in a recorded message released yesterday in which he said Iran had waged a “war against civilization.”
He also predicted that more deaths of U.S. military personnel would likely occur after the Pentagon on Sunday confirmed the deaths of the first three service members in the Middle East.
To date, at least 555 people have been killed in Iran, 13 in Lebanon, 10 in Israel, three in the United Arab Emirates and two in Iraq, with Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait each reporting one death as a result of Iranian retaliation in the region.
On Monday, shortly after the Pentagon confirmed the death of a fourth U.S. service member, President Trump gave no firm timeline for the operation.
“We originally predicted four to five weeks, but it could be much longer than that,” he said.
Trump added that the military had originally planned for four weeks to “end the military leadership” in Iran.
So far, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several other government officials, including the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), have been confirmed killed in US and Israeli attacks.
President Trump said, “We are well ahead of schedule.”
An “America First” war?
President Trump spoke shortly after Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth took questions from reporters for the first time since the attack began.
Mr. Hegseth appears to be responding to President Trump’s concerns that his own “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement could lead to a long war.
During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to end U.S. interventionism and focus on domestic needs over foreign adventurism.
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” Hegseth said.
“This operation is a clear, destructive and decisive mission: destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, and ban nuclear weapons.”
“Israel also has a clear mission and we are grateful for our capable partners,” he said, without defining Israel’s mission.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long called for the overthrow of the Iranian government.
Hegseth also vowed to fight the war “with the utmost authority, without stupid rules of engagement, without quagmire of nation-building, without democracy-building exercises, without politically correct wars, and entirely on our terms.”
