President Donald Trump speaks before participating in a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo) US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Iranian leadership “wants to talk” amid the joint US-Israeli attack on Tehran, but the Republican leader said: “It’s too late.” Trump added that “Iran’s air defense, Air Force, Navy and leadership are gone.”
This comes after Trump’s earlier comments that the United States has “the ability to last much longer” than the projected four to five week timeline for its military operations against Iran.
The president of the United States previously suggested in an interview to New York Post which did not rule out the possibility of sending US military personnel ashore and left open the possibility of a broader US military operation.
“I have no problem with troops on the ground, as every president says, ‘There will be no troops on the ground.’ I’m not saying that,” Trump said. “I say ‘you probably don’t need them’ (or) ‘if they were necessary’.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a news conference on Monday that the Trump administration would not engage in the “silly” exercise of telegraphing “what we will or will not do.”
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Trump on talks with Iran leaders
Donald Trump had previously said that Iran’s political leaders had agreed to engage in talks after joint US-Israeli attacks on Tehran’s military and political infrastructure killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
In an interview with Atlantic Magazine on Sunday, Trump said: “They want to talk and I agreed to talk, so I’m going to talk to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given sooner what was very practical and easy to do. They waited too long.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that “49 of the Iranian regime’s most senior leaders” have been killed in the US-Israeli attacks on Tehran and declared that “killing terrorists is good for the United States.”
