Trump says he might have forced Israel’s hand in Iran strikes decision
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday insisted that Israel had not pressured him to launch a joint military strike on Iran, claiming that he believed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would “strike first.”
Days after the killing of regime leaders and the start of war in Iran, Trump addressed the decision to launch a joint US-Israeli attack on the country and declared that he “may have forced Israel’s hand.”
“I may have pushed them,” Trump said from the White House Oval Office on Tuesday. “You see, we were having conversations with these crazy people, and I was of the opinion that they would attack first…. If we didn’t, they would attack first. I felt very strongly about that…. So, if something were to happen, I could force Israel’s hand.”
Sources previously told Fox News that the timeline of the attack was moved up to allow for an opportunity to strike regime leaders in downtown Tehran, but Trump said both the United States and Israel were ready.
President Donald Trump answered media questions during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“We had a very, very strong impact because almost everything they had was destroyed,” the president said. “Now the number of missiles is decreasing. Surprisingly, they are hitting countries that we can call neutral… I think they were surprised. I guess I was surprised too. Now all of these countries are fighting against them and fighting strongly against them.”
Trump’s comments came after Democrats criticized Trump’s decision to launch an attack on Israel in Iran without congressional approval.
Administration officials said they submitted congressional notifications to the “Gang of Eight,” a bipartisan group of senior congressional intelligence leaders, ahead of the attacks, but Congress did not take a vote to approve them.
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A map showing the targets of Iran’s retaliatory strikes. (Fox News)
The Trump administration has argued that the United States faces an “imminent threat” that has led to military intervention.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would not “sit there and absorb Iran’s coup,” while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the operation was not a “so-called war for regime change” or an open-ended conflict like the one in Iraq.
Trump said he believed the Democrats would not be happy with their decision regardless of the United States’ involvement in attacks on Iran.
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Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. (Getty Images)
“If I didn’t do this, the guys would like this: [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Losers, Democrats Schumer [are] losers — … would say ‘well, you should have done that.’ In other words, if I did this, it’s no good. “If I hadn’t done it, they would have said the opposite: ‘You should have done this’.”
He added that he had “never received so many compliments” on his presidential action and noted that “people felt something had to be done.”
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“We [might] Trump said that oil prices were a little high for a while, but as soon as that’s over, those prices will come down, I believe, even lower than they were before.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.
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