US President Donald Trump indicates that if he decides to return to war against Iran, it would take 2-3 weeks to achieve his goals in the war, The Times of Israel reports.
“We’ve taken out much of what we’d have to do, probably another two weeks, two weeks, maybe three weeks,” he tells conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“We either make the right deal, or we win very easily from the military standpoint,” says Trump.
He stresses that “these lunatics will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump also says that taking Iran’s stockpile of highly-enriched uranium must be part of a deal.
“Yes, we do. That’s part of it,” he says.
Trump downplays the importance of Iran’s ballistic missiles and funding of proxies, two central Israeli goals of the war.
“Look, missiles are bad, but yeah, and they do have to cap it, but this is about they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” says Trump.
He refuses to say that Iran would be stopped from funding proxies, only saying that they wouldn’t be in a position economically to do so given the damage being done to Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Trump says that the US is keeping Iran’s conventional army — as opposed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — intact.
“We’re not looking to decimate the army,” he says. “We purposefully have not gone after them too much, because we think that they’re much more moderate, actually.”
Two days before US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, Trump accuses the pontiff of endangering Catholics by ostensibly accepting a nuclear Iran.
“The Pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and I don’t think that’s very good,” says Trump. “I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But I guess if it’s up to the Pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
