US President Donald Trump has said his administration’s war against Iran “successfully knocked out” the country’s air force and navy.
“We’re doing very well,” Trump said on Tuesday, during a news conference at the White House with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz before their meeting.
“They have no navy; it’s been knocked out. They have no air force; it’s been knocked out. They have no air detection – that’s been knocked out,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments came on the fourth day of US-Israeli strikes on Iran as Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz and continued its retaliatory missile and drone attacks on US and allied targets across the Gulf region.
Trump said he had ordered the attack against Iran on Saturday because he “had a feeling” that Iran would strike first as negotiations over its nuclear programme stalled.
Asked if Israel might have “forced” his hand on attacking Iran, Trump responded, “No, actually, I might have forced their hand.”
On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said that the US attacked Iran because it knew Israel was about to bomb that country, and because the Trump administration believed that Iran would then strike US facilities in the region.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said Trump’s comments are “going to have a tremendous place in the US because the US president doesn’t have the power to declare war unless there is a threat to the US.”
“The US president has not offered any evidence of that,” she said.
Meanwhile, Merz, who is in Washington, DC to discuss a trade deal with the US as well as Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, voiced support for the US-Israeli war on Iran. But he said he hoped it would end soon, since it was hurting the global economy.
“This is, of course, damaging our economies. This is true for the oil prices, and this is true for the gas prices, as well. So, that’s the reason why we all hope that this war will come to an end as soon as possible,” Merz told reporters.
Trump said Germany had been “helping out” by allowing US forces to access certain bases, and drew a sharp contrast to the actions of two other European countries: the United Kingdom and Spain.
“They’re letting us land in certain areas, and we appreciate it, and they’re just making it comfortable. We’re not asking them to put boots on the ground,” Trump said.
Merz said Germany and the US shared a desire to get rid of Iran’s current regime and said he would discuss with Trump what happened once the military operation ended.
“We are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Iran away, and we will talk about the day after,” Merz said.
The war in Iran is politically sensitive for Merz, who faces potential backlash at home over Germany’s support for the US-Israeli operation.
On Sunday, he expressed no criticism of the US air strikes, but stopped short of endorsing an operation which Trump’s critics have said was undertaken without sufficient explanation and the required legal backing in international law.