The United States has launched a military campaign against Iran “to eliminate threats from the current regime,” President Donald Trump said on the Truth Social network.
The American leader called the country’s leadership a “brutal group of people” whose activities directly endanger the United States, “our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies around the world.”
“Their threatening activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases abroad, and our allies around the world,” the president stressed in the address.
Trump stressed that Tehran’s targets “have regularly targeted American military personnel and innocent people in many countries.”
“This was mass terror, and we are not going to tolerate it any longer,” the American president said.
He also recalled that Iranian authorities used hostile rhetoric against Washington for decades, which eventually led to the current military response.
“Our goal-defend the American people by eliminating the immediate threats from the Iranian regime, a group of very violent, horrible people,” Trump added.
In addition, Trump called on the people of Iran to “take power into their own hands after the operation is over.”
A United States official confirmed America’s involvement in the operation against Iran in comments to Radio Liberty. The US official says the airstrikes are still ongoing and are aimed at “weakening Iran’s security infrastructure.”
Media reports say that according to the Iranian official, the country is preparing to retaliate and “the response will be crushing.”
Earlier, on February 28, the Israeli military struck Iranian territory, with explosions in Tehran, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. According to the Israeli side, “the attack was sudden”. At the same time as it began, the IDF sent out a nationwide warning urging citizens to stay close to secure premises.
“This is a preventive message to prepare the population for the possibility of rockets being launched towards the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
According to Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, the country has launched a “preventive military operation” against Iran, which “aims to neutralise the potential threat from Tehran as well as to prevent possible strikes on Israeli territory”.
In 2015, a group of world powers reached a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran to prevent Iran from building an Iranian bomb. Western economic sanctions were relaxed at the time, but Iran began reneging after Donald Trump, during his first term as US president, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.
On 13 February, the US president said regime change in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen”.
He also confirmed that a second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, would soon join the “massive” US armada in the Arabian Sea.
17 Feb US and Iranian officials met in Geneva, Switzerland, for a second round of talks on an agreement aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme and preventing war.
The two sides held indirect talks in early February in Oman, the first since Israeli and U.S. strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites during the brief conflict in June.
The talks come amid a significant U.S. military buildup in the Middle East. Tensions have been rising since massive nationwide protests in Iran last month, during which authorities launched a brutal crackdown that human rights groups say has left thousands dead.