U.S. President Donald Trump said the conflict with Iran could soon come to an end as Washington nears the objectives it set for the military campaign.
“I think the war is almost finished—pretty much,” Trump told reporters on March 9. “They (Iran) no longer have a navy, they no longer have communications systems, and they don’t have an air force anymore.”
He added that Iran’s missile capabilities had been severely weakened.
“Their missiles are now scattered and largely neutralized. Their drones are being destroyed everywhere, including their drone production facilities. If you look at the situation now, they basically have nothing left. Militarily, there’s very little remaining,” Trump said.
According to the U.S. president, the military campaign has progressed far beyond his earlier expectations, when he predicted the conflict might last four to five weeks.
Trump also dismissed reports suggesting the United States might deploy ground troops to Iran to secure the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
“We haven’t made any decisions on that. We’re still a long way from that step,” he said when asked about reported discussions between the U.S. and Israel on sending special forces into Iran to seize and safeguard nuclear materials.
During a press briefing the same day, Trump said the United States had made “major progress” in the conflict and suggested the campaign could already be “nearly complete.”
“We are making great progress toward achieving our military objectives, and some people might say it’s almost done. We have essentially eliminated all forces in Iran,” he declared.
In recent days, however, Trump has offered mixed timelines regarding the conflict. In a speech to Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives shortly before the press briefing, he described the operation as a “short-term deployment.” Yet he also vowed that the United States would “move forward with greater determination than ever to achieve final victory.”
The United States and Israel launched an air campaign against Iran on February 28, with Tehran responding by carrying out retaliatory strikes across the Middle East.
Trump argued that if the United States and Israel had not acted, Iran could have attacked within days.
“They were ready. They had all those missiles—far more than people realized—and they were planning to strike us,” he said. “They would have attacked the entire Middle East and Israel, and if they had nuclear weapons they would have used them against Israel. It would have been a major attack.”
The conflict erupted after negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs reached a stalemate.
Without presenting evidence, the Trump administration last month accused Iran of restarting a nuclear program that Trump had previously claimed was “completely wiped out” by U.S. airstrikes in June last year.
Trump also said Iranian officials had signaled during limited talks with U.S. counterparts earlier this year that they intended to continue pursuing nuclear development.
“Despite countless opportunities to abandon their nuclear ambitions—something they could have done not long ago—they said they wanted to continue developing nuclear weapons,” he said.
The U.S. president added that if American forces had not struck Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer, Tehran might already possess nuclear weapons today.
