President Trump broke his silence following the Iran strikes on Saturday morning, telling Axios of potential “off-ramps” in the conflict.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump told Axios in a phone interview from Mar-a-Lago.
This is the first time Trump commented on the strikes since releasing a statement early on Saturday morning.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump announced earlier that American forces are engaged in what he described as a “massive and ongoing operation” aimed at neutralizing the Iranian regime’s ability to threaten US troops, American allies, and the homeland itself.
Trump pointed to the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, where dozens of Americans were held captive for 444 days, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 US military personnel, Iranian-backed militias responsible for killing and maiming hundreds of American troops in Iraq, and continued proxy attacks against US forces and commercial vessels in Middle Eastern shipping lanes.
He further said that after Operation Midnight Hammer last June, where US forces bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, “we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we repeatedly sought to make a deal.”
“We tried. They wanted to do it—they didn’t,” Trump said. “They wanted to do it—again—they didn’t want to do it.”