By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he told Iran’s new leadership that it’s “too late” to have negotiations amid U.S. and Israeli strikes targeting the country since Saturday morning.
Strikes on Saturday killed Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of high-level Iranian officials. Across the Iranian capital city of Tehran, explosions rang out early Tuesday morning as the United States and Israel hit Iran with new airstrikes. Iran and its allies have hit back against Israel, neighboring Gulf states, and targets critical to the world’s oil and natural gas production.
“Their air defense, air force, navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said, ‘Too late!’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, responding to a Washington Post article about the strikes and the president’s strategy.
Around the same time, the president wrote on his platform that the military has “unlimited mid to upper tier weaponry” and added that a Wall Street Journal report saying otherwise was “wrong.”
The comment comes as the Israeli military said on Tuesday it has struck Iran’s presidential office and the building of the country’s Supreme National Security Council. Those strikes were conducted overnight, it added.
“In addition, the gathering site of the regime’s most senior forum responsible for security decision-making was targeted, as well as the institution for training Iranian military officers and additional key regime infrastructure,” the military said.
Also, on Tuesday, Israeli Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran have “limited significantly” Iran’s ability to fire as Israel has been going after Iran’s missile launchers and has taken out dozens of them. Iran has fired hundreds of missiles, but it’s hard to tally the total amount, as Iran is also striking other countries, he added.
As of Monday afternoon, the U.S. military confirmed that six American service members have died in the campaign. Three U.S. F-15 fighter jets were also shot down in a friendly fire incident in Kuwait, U.S. officials also said, although no casualties were reported.
Before the strikes were launched on Saturday, Washington and Tehran were engaged in talks in Oman and Switzerland regarding the country’s controversial nuclear program, as U.S., European, and Israeli officials have long said Iran was working to produce a nuclear weapon.
Vice President JD Vance on Monday told Fox News that the negotiations did not “pass the smell test” and prompted the White House to authorize the airstrike campaign.
“Nobody objects to the Iranians being able to build medical isotopes; the objection is these enrichment facilities that are only useful for building a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
“It just doesn’t pass the smell test for you to say that you want enrichment for medical isotopes, while at the same time trying to build a facility 70 to 80 feet underground.”
Trump has said that the U.S. and Israeli air attacks had been projected to last four to five weeks, but could go on longer, and signaled that the campaign is ahead of schedule.
“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes,” Trump said at his first public event since the conflict began.
“From the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have [the] capability to go far longer than that.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
