President Donald Trump said he is ‘not happy’ with Iran’s choice of a new supreme leader but that early results from Operation Epic Fury have been ‘way beyond expectation.’
Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been installed as the next supreme leader.
‘I don’t believe he can live in peace,’ Trump said in an interview with Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst.
The president touted what he described as the success of the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation.
‘Way beyond expectation in terms of result this early,’ Trump said.
More than 5,000 targets have been hit by the U.S. military since the operation was launched on Feb. 28, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced Monday.
‘When we attacked them first, we knocked out 50% of their missiles and if we didn’t, it would have been a much harder fight,’ Trump said.
He framed the opening strike as decisive and necessary.
‘No other President had the guts to do it…I don’t want some president who hasn’t got the courage in five years or in ten years to go in. It’s like a gun slinger, where he draws his gun first.’
‘If we waited three days, I believe we would have been attacked.’
Trump described what he called a surprise element in the timing of the operation.
‘Breakfast attacks are unusual and they were misled because they thought we weren’t going at that time and all that… And they just met. It was very, very surprising. And they all met together and it was open.’
‘If they would’ve had a bomb, they’d have used it on Israel and other parts of the Middle East. I think, and probably us, if they could get it there, but it would have been tough.’
Trump said Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner told him Iran claimed it had enough enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.
‘I said, you know, they’re not playing this smart. Because they’re basically saying that I have to attack them. They should have just said, ‘We’re not going to build a nuclear missile.”
Asked whether he would be willing to speak with Iranian leaders, Trump said: ‘I’m hearing they want to talk badly.’
‘It’s possible, depends on what terms, possible, only possible… You know, we sort of don’t have to speak anymore, you know, if you really think about it, but it’s possible.’
Trump also said he was taken aback by Iran targeted Gulf countries in response to the American and Israeli attacks.
‘One of the things that surprised me most was when they attacked countries that were not attacking them,’ he said.
The president also weighed in on reports of a strike that hit a girls school. Iranian state media and UNICEF estimates put the death toll at roughly 165 to 180 people, most of them young schoolgirls, with dozens more injured. The figures have not been independently verified.
‘It’s only under investigation, but we are not the only ones with that particular rocket,’ Trump said.