President Trump on Wednesday dodged a question about whether he’s moving closer to ordering a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
“You don’t seriously think I’m going to answer that question. Will you strike the Iranian nuclear component?” Trump said.
“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble. And they want to negotiate. And I say why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction.”
The president’s comments came a day after he met in the Situation Room at the White House with members of his national security team amid conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.
“They had bad intentions. For 40 years they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else they didn’t like,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “They were schoolyard bullies. And now they’re not bullies anymore but we’ll see what happens.”
Trump said Iran had reached out in recent days. He said his response was that it was “very late,” shaking his head as he spoke. The president told reporters the Iranians had even suggested coming to the White House for talks, something he acknowledged would be logistically difficult.
“War is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. Lot of turns are made. So I don’t know, I wouldn’t say we won anything yet. I would say we sure as hell made a lot of progress,” Trump said. “The next week is going to be very big. Maybe less than a week.”
The U.S. has not been directly involved in strikes against Iran thus far, and some of Trump’s own allies have cautioned against engaging in a war with Iran. But the president’s rhetoric in recent days has gotten more threatening toward Tehran.
Trump on Tuesday called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and posted on Truth Social that Iran’s “Supreme Leader” is an “easy target,” but that there are not plans to take him out — “at least for now.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some Trump allies have pushed for the U.S. to more aggressively target Iran. Such steps could include using bunker-buster bombs to destroy a key Iranian nuclear facility that is buried inside a mountain.
