US President Donald Trump said Saturday he still has multiple “off ramps” from the US military campaign against Iran, signaling that the operation could be brief despite its sweeping scope.
In a five-minute phone interview with Axios from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he could either “go long and take over the whole thing” or wrap up the strikes within days and warn Tehran against rebuilding its nuclear and missile programs.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump said.
“In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack,” he predicted.
The comments offered the first real window into Trump’s thinking about how the operation ended and suggested he was still open to a diplomatic solution, even after US-Iran nuclear talks collapsed in Geneva.
A short operation followed by new ultimatums would be a dramatically different outcome than the regime change that some US and Israeli officials described as the goal. Trump faced domestic pressure, including from his MAGA base, to avoid a prolonged Middle East intervention.
Trump cited two main reasons for launching the strikes, the first being the failure of negotiations this week led by his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“The Iranians got close and then pulled back — close and then pulled back. I understood from that that they don’t really want a deal,” he said.
The second reason was Iran’s conduct over the last several decades.
Trump said that while writing his speech Friday announcing the attack, he asked his team to compile every Iranian-linked attack around the world over the past 25 years.
“I saw that every month they did something bad, blew something up or killed someone,” he told Axios.
Trump also claimed that Iran had begun rebuilding some of the nuclear facilities that the US and Israel struck during last June’s 12-Day War. Independent analysts pointed to building activity taking place in some of the nuclear sites, but did not conclude that Iran had resumed nuclear activity.
Trump reiterated several times that his decision to launch “Operation Midnight Hammer” — which destroyed or significantly damaged three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — allowed the current operation to take place. He argued that if he had not struck the nuclear facilities in June, Iran might have already developed a nuclear weapon by now, which would have made it impossible to attack.
The US and Israel launched what was described as the most ambitious military operation in the Middle East in a generation, designed not just to degrade Iran’s military capabilities, but to create the conditions that could bring down the regime.
The US-Israeli operational plan envisioned the massive bombing campaign lasting at least five days, according to a senior US official. However, Trump told Axios that timeline could change based on developments on the ground, including the fate of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whom Israel targeted for assassination along with other senior officials.
