President Donald Trump warned Iran that the U.S. has been “nice” so far in its attacks against the Middle East nation as tensions continue to rise and the threat of full-blown war remains.
Speaking in the Oval Office Tuesday alongside Lebanese president Joseph Aoun, Trump said Iran was once again being “decimated” and disclaimed any interest in new ceasefire negotiations after a wave of attacks on U.S. bases and allies. But he cautioned the U.S. could escalate attacks on Iran in ways that would leave the country’s infrastructure so devastated it could take “decades” for Tehran to rebuild as the renewed conflict heads into a third full week.
“They want to desperately meet, and until they’re ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest,” Trump said.
“If we left today, it would take them decades to rebuild, and I don’t believe they’d ever rebuild. And honestly, they haven’t seen anything yet — we’ve been nice.”
The president also said the U.S. would be striking Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility, where Tehran is thought to have moved centrifuges needed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity. But he downplayed the significance of the facility by suggesting that American intelligence has been tracking nuclear materials rather than the equipment needed to enrich the materials.
“It doesn’t mean anything unless they have the material. They don’t have. We follow the material. That’s where the action is, and we’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. And there’s not not a thing they can do about it,” he said.
He also suggested that he would intervene in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel by speaking with Hezbollah if asked by Aoun.
“If the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah, you know he’s lived with Hezbollah for a long time, and if the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah, I would,” he said.
The president’s latest comments come as the renewed American bombing campaign against Tehran entered its tenth day with no end in sight.
But those attacks don’t appear to be having any effect on Iranian capabilities in a way that would bring an end to the war Trump started on February 28, with intelligence officials telling The Washington Post that the airstrikes aren’t likely to cause the Islamic Republic’s leaders to change course or soften negotiating demands.
Instead, U.S. intelligence officials have briefed the Trump administration that Tehran and Washington are now stuck in limbo, with both sides refusing to deescalate.
When pressed on whether he had any plan to bring an end to the war, Trump became irate and lashed out at the female journalist who’d asked him the question and repeated his oft-used claim that Tehran has been “decimated” by the U.S. air campaign.
“You don’t get that when you listen to your fake station. You don’t know anything,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed to continue fighting “until the very last day” in a Monday statement in which they suggested the war could go on “for several years” with their “missiles and drones” continuing to “rain down on American criminals” during that time.
Iran’s attacks over the weekend killed multiple American service members, the first to lose their lives since the start of the war in March.
In response, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Tehran would “pay … many times over” for every American killed.
