WASHINGTON.– President Donald Trump assured this Monday that the attacks against Iran were the “last and best opportunity” to stop the rapid development of Tehran’s missile program and eliminate the “intolerable threats” to the United States.
In his first live appearance since the start on Saturday of Operation ‘Epic Fury‘ against Iranian targets that ended the life of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Trump insisted that the Islamic Republic “already had missiles capable of reaching Europe and our bases, both domestic and foreign, and would soon have missiles capable of reaching our beautiful United States.”
“The regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, posing a very clear and colossal threat to the United States and our forces stationed abroad,” warned Trump, who has used imminent Iranian military action to justify joint attacks with Israel.
The US president stated that Iran sought to protect “its development of nuclear weapons.”
“This was our last and best opportunity to launch the attack we are carrying out now and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime,” he insisted at an event at the White House.
“We were projecting between four and five weeks, but we have the capacity to go much further than that,” he added.
He explained that the objectives of the operation are “clear” and include the destruction of Iran’s missile capabilities and its ability to continue weapons production, the annihilation of the Navy by disabling about ten Iranian ships and ensuring that Tehran “cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.”
He also stated that the US wants to ensure that “the Iranian regime cannot continue arming, financing and directing terrorist armies outside its borders.”
During the event at the White House, Trump awarded Medals of Honor to three American soldiers, two of them posthumously, and sent condolences to the families of the four American soldiers killed in the initial attacks of Operation ‘Epic Fury’.
“We continue this mission with fierce and unwavering determination to crush the threat this terrorist regime poses to the American people,” he said.
Sending troops
Trump did not rule out sending troops to Iran “if they were necessary,” although he says that it is not an issue that worries him at the moment, since the operation dubbed ‘Epic Fury’ is progressing better than expected.
“I’m not concerned with the deployment of troops on the ground; as all presidents say, ‘there will be no troops on the ground,’ I’m not saying that,” Trump stressed in statements to the ‘New York Post’, from where he stated that in just days they have achieved the objectives they set for the next four weeks.
“It’s going very quickly. We are complying with the schedule,” he said, highlighting that with regard to casualties among the Iranian leadership they are “far ahead” of what they had established, after managing to kill 49 senior officials.
Faced with the possibility of possible retaliation, Trump has downplayed the capabilities of Iran and its regional partners. “We will eliminate it, like everything else, we will eliminate it.”
