US President Donald Trump said on Friday that the Israeli strikes on nuclear and military targets in Iran were “excellent” and warned there was much more to come, in a phone interview with ABC News.
“I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance, and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more,” Trump said.
ABC News said that the US president refused to comment on whether there was American participation in the strikes.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”
In an earlier post, Trump said: “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end.”
He urged Iran “to make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.”
Trump said Iranians had refused to agree to a deal, despite his many warnings of military actions that “would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.”
“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.
The president did not indicate whether the US would join the military action, but said he would continue to arm Israel with weapons to use against Iran.
“Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come — and they know how to use it,” he wrote.
On Thursday, Trump had said an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites “could very well happen” but advised against it, at a time when he was apparently well informed of the upcoming offensive. Some reports have claimed his comments were part of a ruse to lull Tehran into a false sense of security ahead of the Israeli assault.
“I don’t want them going in, because I think it would blow it,” Trump said when asked about his discussions with Netanyahu about an Israeli strike. “Might help it actually, but it also could blow it.”
Israel struck Iranian military and nuclear targets early Friday to block Tehran from developing atomic weapons, even as the Trump administration was preparing to hold a sixth round of talks on Sunday on Tehran’s escalating uranium enrichment program.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, stressed that Israel’s strikes were unilateral, while saying the US had known they would occur.
On Thursday, just hours before the strikes, Trump made the case that there was still time for diplomacy, but it was running out.
The White House had still planned to dispatch special envoy Steve Witkoff to Oman on Sunday for the next round of talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Iran announced that those talks would no longer take place.
The push by the Trump administration to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear program came after the US and other world powers in 2015 reached a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
But Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Obama administration-brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever.”
The Islamic Republic, which vows to destroy Israel, says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes. However, it enriches uranium up to 60 percent — a level that has no civilian purpose and is close to the 90% threshold needed for a nuclear warhead — and has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities.