US President Donald Trump has said it is “too late” for talks with Iran after Tehran attempted to hold talks amid a US-Israeli military operation.
Their air defence, Air Force, Navy and leadership are gone. They want to talk. I said: Too late!”, Trump wrote in a social media post on 3 March.
He did not specify when Iranian officials said they were ready to begin talks.
Trump had previously predicted the strikes on Iran would last about four weeks, but later said the operation could drag on and would last “as long as it takes.”
Explaining the strikes on Iran, which the US followed Israel in launching on 28 February, said the aim was to disrupt its nuclear programme in particular to prevent Tehran from producing nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly stated that its programme and peaceful and does not aim to build weapons.
According to the American president, the development of Iran’s ballistic missile programme also poses a huge threat to the US. Trump reiterated that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
The joint United States-Israeli operation against Iran resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a significant number of other senior Iranian regime officials.
In response, 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.
The day before, Bloomberg reported that Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates claimed to have intercepted a total of 385 Iranian missiles and 881 Iranian drones in the first 48 hours of the US-Israeli campaign2. However, these figures only count the projectiles intercepted by these five states and do not include missiles and drones that hit their targets.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the strongest US strikes against targets in Iran are “still to come”. He said the strikes are aimed at destroying Iran’s ballistic missile and naval capabilities.
The head of Iran’s main security body, the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said on 2 March that Tehran “will not negotiate” with Washington. He released the statement hours after US President Donald Trump pledged to continue to punish Iran with the “full force” of the US military.