The president signaled that the United States is ‘not finished yet’ with Iran and that there would ‘be more of the same.’
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 11 that Iran’s military has been severely degraded by U.S.–Israeli strikes during the conflict, which began in late February.
On March 11, Iran attacked commercial ships across the Persian Gulf and also Dubai International Airport, escalating a campaign of squeezing the oil-rich region as global energy concerns mounted.
The International Energy Agency agreed to release the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history to counter the war’s effects on energy markets.
“Our military is the best. It’s the most powerful in the world, and they’re hitting them very hard,” Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House on Air Force One. “We’re not finished yet.”
When asked by a reporter if the U.S. military needed to take more action, Trump said that there would be “more of the same” and that “we’ll see how that all comes out.”
“Right now, they’ve lost their navy. They’ve lost their air force. They have no anti-aircraft apparatus at all,” Trump said. “They have no radar. Their leaders are gone, and we could do a lot worse.”
He said that the military is sparing some members of the Iranian leadership and infrastructure, or “they literally would never be able to build that country back again.” He said that the United States “could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour.”
“[The military has] hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we’re not finished yet,” the president said.
Iranian forces are targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz with missiles, drones, and mines. The U.S. military has attempted to limit Iran’s mine-laying capabilities to make the strait safer for oil tankers.
The waterway off Iran’s coast, vital for oil and gas, has effectively been closed. Early on March 11, three commercial ships were hit by Iranian projectiles.
Trump told reporters that the United States “took out just about all of their mines” and that U.S. forces had also destroyed “just about all of their mine ships in one night.” He said oil companies could go ahead and use the strait.
“I think they should,” the president told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Ohio and Kentucky.
