Iran War May Go Longer Than Five Weeks – Trump

United States President Donald Trump has said the plan for the Iran war initially “projected four to five weeks”, adding the US military has the “capability to go far longer than that”.

Speaking on Monday from the White House, Trump outlined his administration’s justification for going to war against Iran alongside Israel, saying that Iran posed “grave threats” to the US, even as he again claimed that US strikes on Iran in June of last year led to the “obliteration of Iran’s nuclear programme”.

Trump also said that Iran’s ballistic missile programme was “growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas”.

“The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” Trump said, repeating a claim his administration has repeatedly made in the run-up to Saturday’s attack, for which US government officials have not provided any evidence.

The statements were significant, with Trump appearing to pivot from claims that Iran posed an immediate threat to the US. Instead, he characterised the Iranian government as potentially posing a longer-term threat.

“The purpose of this fast-growing missile programme was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these – highly forbidden by us – nuclear weapons,” Trump said.

“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people,” Trump said.

To date, at least  555 people have been killed in Iran, 13 have been killed in Lebanon, 10 killed in Israel, three killed in the United Arab Emirates, and two killed in Iraq, with Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait each reporting one death amid Iranian retaliations in the region.