U.S. Announces First Casualties In Iran War; Poll Signals Challenge For Trump
The US military said US planes and warships have struck more than 1,000 Iranian targets since Trump ordered the launch of major combat operations on Saturday. Strikes include B-2 stealth bombers dropping 2,000lb bombs on Iran’s underground fortified missile facilities.
U.S. Central Command said many other U.S. soldiers also suffered minor shrapnel injuries and concussions. He did not explain where and how these losses occurred.
Two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that US soldiers were killed at a base in Kuwait.
Trump sought to prepare the American public for more deaths by acknowledging the first deaths in major operations since he returned to office last year. The U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last June and the U.S. military’s capture of Venezuela’s president in January did not lead to deaths in the United States.
Trump lamented the deaths in a video speech but said “unfortunately, there will likely be more before this is over.”
“But America will avenge them and deal the heaviest blow to the terrorists who are basically waging war against civilization,” he said.
US ambassador to the United Nations, Michael Waltz, said in his post on X: “Freedom is never free.”
TRUMP SAID ATTACKS AGAINST IRAN COULD LAST FOUR WEEKS
In a separate interview with the Daily Mail, Trump said the strikes could last four weeks.
“This has always been a four-week process. We thought it would be about four weeks. It’s always been about a four-week process, no matter how strong a large country is, it takes four weeks or less,” Trump said.
Iran’s foreign minister said in a post on channel X that his country’s military was examining “the defeats of the US army in our near east and west,” referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We incorporated lessons accordingly,” he said. “The bombings of our capital have no impact on our ability to wage war.”
THERE IS NO SIMPLE ANSWER TO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
In an interview with Atlantic magazine, Trump was quoted as saying, “They want to talk, and I agreed to talk, so I’ll talk to them. They should have done this sooner… They waited too long.”
Democratic US Senator Chris Coons said he does not see how regime change in Iran could occur with the current operation. “There is no instance in modern history that I know of where regime change has occurred solely through airstrikes,” Coons said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Jonathan Panikoff, the former U.S. deputy national intelligence official for the Near East, said Washington and Israel appear to be pursuing a strategy aimed not only at weakening Iran’s military intervention capabilities but also at destabilizing the regime by eliminating its top leadership and testing the loyalty of its base.
He said the success of this approach would ultimately depend on whether security forces stand aside or flee if social unrest re-emerges.
“There’s no simple answer to what’s going to happen next,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump ally and defense hawk, echoed Trump’s call for the Iranian people to decide who runs their government.
“You know, I don’t believe one bit in the idea of ’If you break it, you own it,'” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“This is not Iraq. This is not Germany. This is not Japan. We will save the people from the terrorist regime.”
Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Doina Chiacu; Edit: Paul Simao
