US President Donald Trump said the US military has “not even begun” to destroy what’s left of Iran after a month of devastating air attacks and threatened to strike power plants and bridges.
“Our armed forces, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) in the entire world, have not even begun to destroy what is left of Iran. Bridges and then power plants are next in line. The leadership of the new regime knows what needs to be done, and it needs to be done quickly,” Trump wrote in Truth Social late in the evening of 2 April.
The remarks, without further elaboration, were published hours after Iran launched new missile and drone attacks on Israel and the Gulf states following Trump’s prior warning to Tehran that it must “make a deal” before there is “nothing left of the country.”
Trump continued to send somewhat contradictory signals regarding the war, saying in a televised address on 1 April that the United States was close to “finishing the job” in Iran, while warning that U.S. forces would continue to strike the country “extremely hard.”
In the speech, the US president justified the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
In another Truth Social publication, Trump hailed the US strike on a large bridge connecting Iran’s capital to neighbouring provinces, which Iranian media described as the tallest bridge in the Middle East. Iran said the strike on the bridge killed eight people and injured nearly 100, although that information could not be verified from independent sources.
The United States handed Iran a 15-point peace plan in March. Tehran said it rejected the U.S. plan, calling it “unrealistic, illogical and excessive.”
The joint United States-Israeli operation against Iran, which began on 28 February, resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a significant number of other senior Iranian regime officials.
Iran’s military has attacked not only Israel or US military installations in the region with missiles and drones, but also many of its regional neighbours, which Tehran considers allies of the United States. In addition, Iran has blocked a key sea route, the Strait of Hormuz.