Washington/ Tehran, March 3 (.) US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said American forces are dealing significant blows on Iran but signaled that the most intense phase of operations has not yet begun.
“We’re knocking the crap out of them,” Trump said in a nine-minute phone interview with CNN. “I think it’s going very well. It’s very powerful. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and we’re using it.”
Trump described the campaign as highly targeted, claiming that initial strikes have eliminated 49 Iranian leaders, including key political and military figures. “They got a little bit arrogant by meeting all in one place. They thought they were undetectable. We were shocked by it,” he said.
He warned that the next phase, which he called the “big wave,” is imminent. “We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” he said.
Trump acknowledged that Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Arab nations, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, had been the “biggest surprise” so far. “We were surprised, they were going to be very little involved and now they insist on being involved,” he said.
On the expected length of the conflict, Trump said, “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
On Iran’s leadership succession, he said, “We don’t know who the leadership is. They don’t even know who’s leading them now… It’s a little like the unemployment line.”
Trump’s argument that repeated failed negotiations with Tehran left the US with no alternative but military action seams inconvincible as three round of negotiations took place. “We couldn’t make a deal with these people… This is the way to deal with Iran,” he said, citing the country’s decades-long history of attacks on US and allied interests.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the pre-emptive strikes in coordination with Israel were intended to neutralize the Iranian threat and protect American forces. “It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack, they were going to respond against the United States,” Rubio said.
He added that planned Israeli actions against Iran, which would have triggered retaliation against US forces, prompted Washington to strike first. “We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said.
Rubio said the operation focused on eliminating the threat from Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and its navy, particularly to protect US naval assets. “That is what it is focused on doing right now, and it’s doing quite successfully,” he said.
The air campaign has killed several of Iran’s top military and political leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US military has reported six American service member deaths, while the Iranian Red Crescent Society said more than 500 people have been killed in Iran.
Reactions in Washington remain sharply divided along party lines. Republicans broadly support Trump’s actions, while Democrats criticized the strikes as an unnecessary escalation with unclear objectives. Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer described the administration’s briefing as “completely and totally insufficient” and called it “Trump’s war of choice.”
The conflict marks a significant escalation in US-Iran tensions and has drawn international attention amid ongoing regional retaliation and continued US-Israeli military operations.
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