US President Donald Trump threatened to escalate attacks on Iran if it disrupted global oil supplies, saying “they’ll get hit at a much, much harder level.”
Trump threatens to hit Iran harder if it blocks energy supplies
Iran war may end ‘pretty quickly’: What Trump told Republicans
US President Donald Trump has told congressional Republicans that the war with Iran could be over “pretty quickly”, as he defended the military campaign and outlined Washington’s objectives in the conflict.
The United States and Israel launched the campaign against Iran on February 28, with large-scale air and missile strikes on Iranian military infrastructure, including air-defence systems, missile launchers and naval assets. The first day of the operation killed Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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The war has now entered its second week, and in his latest speech, Trump has highlighted what he described as the successes of Operation Epic Fury and suggested that it could end soon.
Here are some key takeaways from his remarks.
Trump calls Iran’s operation a ‘short-term excursion’
Trump framed the recent military action against Iran as a “little excursion” that was necessary to eliminate “some evil”.
He said that due to the incredible capabilities of the US military, this engagement would be strictly a “short-term excursion”.
While this action had caused a “little pause” in the economy, he said, it was not a big one, and the economy would quickly surge and “blow it away”.
The war will end ‘pretty quickly’
Trump also declared that the war on Iran is “going to be finished pretty quickly”.
He explained that such a rapid conclusion would be due to the highly effective and “brilliant work” of the US military, noting the following progress:
- The military has already wiped out roughly “80 percent” of Iran’s missile launchers, reducing its capabilities to a “trickle”, with the remaining launchers being eliminated very quickly.
- “The missiles have been largely knocked out… the drones have been knocked out, and we’re hitting where they make the drones,” he said.
He emphasised that as soon as this operation is finished, it will result in a “much safer world”.
Trump also claimed that the US military sank “46 top-of-the-line” Iranian naval ships over three and a half days.
Recounting a conversation with a military official, Trump said he had asked why the ships were sunk instead of captured.
“’We could have used it. Why did we sink them?’” Trump had apparently asked the official. “He said, ‘It’s more fun to sink them’.
“They like sinking them better. They say it’s safer to sink them. I guess it’s probably true.”
The US prevented an imminent attack ‘within a week’ on US and allies
Trump also asserted that the US had to strike Iran because Tehran had been preparing to attack the US, though neither the US president, nor anyone else in his administration, has presented any evidence to back the claim.
“Within a week, they were going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready,” Trump said.
He also claimed that Iran had missiles aimed at neutral Middle Eastern nations, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, which ultimately sided with the US.
“I think they were looking to take over the Middle East, because when you look, and we have pretty good proof, all of those missiles were… aimed at Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE,” he added.
Trump celebrated the killing of leadership
He celebrated the killing of several Iranian leaders, stating that they are “gone” and that “nobody has any idea who the people are that are going to lead that country”.
He connected this speech to his first-term operation that assassinated Qassem Soleimani, whom he called the “father of the roadside bomb”.
Soleimani was the longtime commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s Quds Force, and was widely seen as a key architect of Iran’s regional network of allied groups.
‘We haven’t won enough’
Trump said the US could now declare its military campaign against Iran a success, but the US is going to go further.
“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump said.
“We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all. Forty-seven years, it should have been done a long time ago,” he added.
‘Disappointed’ Mojtaba Khamenei is Iran’s new supreme leader
Trump says he is “disappointed” that Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Ali Khamenei, as the supreme leader of the country.
“We think it’s going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country,” Trump said.
When asked whether the new leader had a target on his back, Trump said it would be “inappropriate” to say. Israel has said it will attempt to assassinate any new Iranian leader chosen to replace Ali Khamenei.
‘No middle ground’: Israelis back Iran war, despite taking mounting hits
Itamar Greenberg laughed when asked if he thought he should be afraid. The 19-year-old Israeli antiwar activist had just described being spat on in the street and is the target of an online hate campaign.
“Yes!” he finally responded. “If I thought about it, I probably should be. I just don’t have time.”
Voices like Greenberg’s are rare in Israel at a time when public clamour for war is growing, and genocidal language already familiar to millions of Palestinians is reemerging, but with a different target – Iran.
Officially, 11 Israelis have been killed in Iranian strikes since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28. What the actual number might be, or how many of Iran’s ballistic missiles may have penetrated the country’s Iron Dome defence shield, is unknown.
Speaking at the site of an Iranian missile strike in West Jerusalem, shortly after the start of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the use of apocalyptic language that has characterised the genocide his country has conducted in Gaza. Comparing Iranians with the Jewish people’s biblical foe, Amalek, who the Jews had been divinely ordered to wipe from the face of the planet, Netanyahu told reporters: “In this week’s Torah portion, we read, “‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember, and we act.”
So far, Iran claims to have launched strikes across Israel, saying its missiles and drones hit military sites, symbolic infrastructure, and even Netanyahu’s office. Tehran has described the attacks as precise and strategic, rather than indiscriminate and part of a broader regional response. Iran also claims to have targeted locations such as Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport and Haifa.
However, Israeli officials have denied many of the specific claims. Netanyahu’s office dismissed Iranian assertions about hitting his office, or affecting his condition, as “fake news”, with stringent reporting restrictions on Iranian strikes within Israel making confirmation either way difficult.
What is clearer is that against the drumbeat of Iranian strikes, the fervour for war appears to be increasing among the public. A poll carried out last week by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) suggested overwhelming public support for the war, with 93 percent of Jewish-Israeli respondents expressing support for the strikes on Iran, and 74 percent expressing support for Netanyahu, the country’s historically divisive prime minister.
“No one’s talking about opposition to the war,” Greenberg said, describing an environment in which figures from across Israel’s media and political landscape – with the exception of the left-wing Hadash party and antiwar organisations such as Greenberg’s Mesarvot – had lined up behind the war. “It’s also getting increasingly violent,” he said.
“We held a protest on Tuesday, where the police were already waiting. They beat and arrested us. I was illegally strip-searched,” he said, describing it as efforts intended to humiliate him.
Greenberg is no stranger to such tactics. Six months ago, after being arrested for protesting the genocide in Gaza, prison guards had threatened to carve a Star of David on his face, a permanent reminder of what they thought his priorities should be.
It’s not just antiwar activists who have faced the brunt of the Israeli security establishment’s force.
“The atmosphere is very violent,“ lawmaker Ofer Cassif of the Hadash party told Al Jazeera. “When I leave the house, I’m more worried by the danger posed by a physical attack by fascists than I am by any missile,” he said.
Hadash and lawmakers like Cassif have been targeted by physical threats and attacks throughout the Gaza war. But criticism of the Netanyahu government’s handling of Israeli captives in Gaza meant that opposition to the Gaza war was – comparatively – more socially acceptable. When it comes to Iran, the current climate is toxic, Cassif said.
“We’re often accused of supporting the regime in Tehran,” Cassif explained of the attempts to delegitimise their opposition to the war.
“We’re unequivocally not. We want to see that regime go, but we’re not going to allow Netanyahu to say he’s doing this for the Iranian people. He isn’t. That’s not just rhetoric, that’s fact. The Israeli leadership was just as supportive of the shah as the US, and he was a murderous dictator no less than the current regime,” Cassif said, referring to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the leader of Iran before the Islamic revolution.
For now, analysts and observers in Israel describe a society that believes it is almost engaged in a holy war.
“They brought an antiwar activist onto one of the light news programmes,” political analyst Ori Goldberg said from near Tel Aviv, “and she was treated like you would a flat-earther. It’s as if it’s inconceivable that anyone would oppose this war.
Iranians rally to welcome Mojtaba Khamenei as new supreme leader
Some Iranians took to the streets of downtown Tehran to show their support for Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader.
Iran war live: Trump says conflict will be over soon; Gulf attacks continue
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Trump says US-Israeli war on Iran will be over ‘very soon’
United States President Donald Trump has said that he expects the war on Iran to be over “very soon” after dubbing the past 10 days of war, which have wrought devastation on Iran, a “short-term excursion”.
Addressing the media in Doral, Florida, Trump claimed that the US and Israel had struck 5,000 targets since the war began on February 28, when Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed.
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Trump spoke as Iran’s hardliners staged a show of loyalty to new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – the former supreme leader’s son – whose appointment was confirmed on Sunday amid US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, civilian areas and critical infrastructure, such as oil refineries and a desalination plant.
While Trump appeared to say hostilities would soon end, he nevertheless threatened a larger attack on Iran if it continued to block shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which has led to a major spike in oil prices, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, at one point topping $119 a barrel.
“I will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe’s oil supply. And if Iran does anything to do that, they’ll get hit at a much, much harder level,” the US president said.
He said the US was putting an end to threats in the Strait of Hormuz, offering political risk insurance to tankers operating in the Gulf” and asserting, “We’ll perhaps go alongside them for protection”.
He also said that the US and Israel were continuing to target Iran’s drone and missile stocks. “Starting today, we know all of the places they manufacture drones, and they’re being hit one after the another,” he said, adding that the country’s “missile capability” was “down to about 10 percent, maybe less”.
‘Short-term excursion’
Earlier, Trump had told a gathering of Republicans at his golf club in Doral that the war in Iran was a “short-term excursion”, while insisting that the offensive would continue “until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated”.
“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some people,” Trump told assembled guests. “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”
Trump’s appearance at the news conference came on the back of his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Trump said Putin wanted “to be helpful” on the latter conflict.
“I said, ‘You could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine war over with. That will be more helpful.’ But we had a very good talk,” Trump said.
Unlike Trump, Putin had on Monday congratulated Mojtaba Khamenei on succeeding his late father as supreme leader, reaffirming Moscow’s support for Tehran.
Asked about the new supreme leader, Trump said he was “disappointed” about the selection. “We think it’s going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country.”
When asked whether the new leader had a target on his back, Trump said it would be “inappropriate” for him to say.
Israel has said it will target for assassination any new Iranian leader chosen to replace Ayatollah Khamenei.
Referring back to last year’s 12-day war, Trump reiterated claims that if the US and Israel had not launched their joint offensive to “knock out the Iranian potential”, Iran would have a nuclear weapon.