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President Trump on Saturday threatened to unload further strikes on Iran if it didn’t accept peace immediately, saying the “future attacks” would be “far greater” — and not ruling out ordering more US military attacks.
“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” Trump warned in his 10 p.m. address to the nation, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“This cannot continue. There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”
The US military carried out “massive precision strikes” on three key nuclear facilities in Iran earlier Saturday night — Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan — which Trump said left the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities “completely and totally obliterated.”
“Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal, but if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill,” Trump said of possible future attacks — not revealing which targets would be next.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.”
The US worked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decapitate Iran’s nuclear supply, Trump said, congratulating the Israeli leader and thanking their military.
“We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done, and most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades,” the president said.
“Hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity,” he said of the US military.
He said the historic strikes have been a long time coming.
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty,” he said. “We lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate.”
The president had weighed whether to approve the US military strikes for days before giving the final go-ahead, a decision he previously said he would make “seconds” before he needed to.
He had said Thursday that he would make the call “within the next two weeks” on whether to strike — and ultimately gave the green light after Iran said Friday it would not negotiate while under fire from Israel, according to a source close to the White House.
Trump said the Pentagon would hold an 8 a.m. press conference about the strikes.
English (US)