President Donald Trump on Friday put the United States firmly in Israel’s corner after Israeli forces attacked Iranian nuclear sites and conducted targeted strikes on Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists, warning Iranian officials that they should come back to the negotiating table with him before more Israeli strikes hit with devastating effect.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said he’d given Tehran “chance after chance to make a deal” that would have headed off the strikes by putting restrictions on the country’s nuclear weapons program and complained that Iranian negotiators had never been able to come to an agreement.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” he wrote. Trump also said he’d warned Iran that Israel “has a lot” of American-made military hardware — “the best and most lethal” — and is quite proficient in using it.
“Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” he added.
Continuing, Trump said there was “still time” for Iranian officials to make the “slaughter” by Israeli forces “come to an end” before “even more brutal attacks” come next.
“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he said.
In a separate post, Trump said he’d previously given Tehran a “60 day ultimatum to ‘make a deal’” and claimed that the strikes by Israel took place on “day 61.”
“I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance,” he said.
In a brief phone interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the president elaborated on his social media post when asked if he was saying the U.S. had gotten advance warning of the strikes from Israeli officials.
"Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what's going on,” he said.
"I told the other side, I said, you have 60 days to make the deal. On the 61st day, they attacked. Today is 61 actually, and it was a very successful attack. They should have made a deal and they still can make a deal while they have something left— they still can," he added.
Separately, the president told CNN that the Israeli attacks had been “very successful” and said the Israeli government had operated with full American support.
“We of course support Israel, obviously and supported it like nobody has ever supported it,” he said.
Trump’s boast of having foreknowledge of Israel’s attack plans stood in stark contrast to the initial reaction from another top American official, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in a statement released by the White House called the strikes “unilateral” and said the U.S. was “not involved in strikes against Iran” and remained focused on protecting forces in the region.
Rubio, who is also serving as Trump’s acting national security adviser, added that Israel had “advised” American officials that the strikes were “necessary for its self-defense” and warned Iran against targeting American “interests or personnel.”
The Israeli attacks, which are understood to include audacious drone strikes launched from within Iran’s borders as well as hundreds of Israeli Air Force fighters, come after weeks of negotiations between American and Iranian officials aimed at reaching an accord to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
Those talks, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long opposed, are unlikely to resume at this point, as Trump claims the Iranian officials most relevant to the talks were killed in the attacks.
The Israeli strikes are the latest chapter in a years-long story of opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which the Israeli government has long described as an existential threat to the country.
In a televised statement following the onset of the attacks, Netanyahu described the action as a “targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival” and warned that operations would “take as long as is needed to complete the task of fending off the threat of annihilation against us.”
He said the targets of the operation had been Iranian nuclear infrastructure as well as ballistic missile infrastructure and other military locations, with Israeli defense forces stating that there were strikes on “dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran” by Israeli jets.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called the operation a “preemptive strike” — an attack meant to ward off another imminent attack — and said Iran had been expected to conduct “a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population ... in the immediate future.”
Israel has long threatened to carry out military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring an atomic bomb. Israeli officials have accused Iran of seeking a bomb in secret, without providing evidence.
Iran denies that its nuclear program is aimed at building a bomb, a claim that is backed by U.S. intelligence, and Iranian officials had repeatedly refused a U.S. demand to give up the ability to enrich uranium, which it says it needs to fuel its nuclear power program, but which could also be used to build a nuclear weapon.
A 2015 agreement between Tehran, the United States and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council had imposed strict limits on Iranian nuclear program activities and enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump had unilaterally withdrew from that deal during his first term, insisting that he could strike a better bargain, and imposed sweeping sanctions.
That decision resulted in Iran reviving and improving its nuclear facilities and enriched uranium to a much higher purity than it had under the previous deal, and much closer to the grade needed to make a bomb.
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