Trump holds press conference as U.S.-Israel-led Iran war enters second week : NPR
President Trump speaks to reporters during a press conference at Trump National Doral Miami March 9 in Doral, Florida. Trump spoke about his administration’s strikes against Iran.
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Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images
President Trump touted the military’s success Monday as the United States begins its second week of strikes in Iran and amid a resulting surge in oil and gas prices.
“We are making major progress toward achieving our military objective. And some might say it is being accomplished quite well,” he said at a news conference at his resort in Doral, Florida, his first since the start of the war led by the United States and Israel. “We have wiped out all the forces in Iran, very completely, most of the Iranian naval powers have been sunk.”
Trump said the military effort was “way ahead of our original schedule. I would say we probably wouldn’t have thought that after a month we would be here.”
Trump also said they had given up on achieving “some of the most important goals,” such as electricity generation.
“So we’re not looking to do it if we don’t have to. But these are the kinds of things that are very easy to hit, but very devastating if they get hit. We wait to see what happens before we hit them, we could take them all out in a day,” he said.
Trump also added that rising oil and gas prices are affecting other countries more than the United States.
“It doesn’t really affect us,” he said, even though U.S. gas prices have climbed in recent days.
“In the long term, oil supplies will be considerably more secure, without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles, nuclear threat or anything,” he said.
Trump faces reporters as the average price of a gallon of gasoline has climbed, a growing political problem for Trump, who has been full of praise for how he has lowered gas prices since returning to office. Crude oil prices nearly reached $120 a barrel on Monday before falling again.
But Trump told CBS News before Monday’s news conference that he thinks “the war is pretty much over.”
Iran has “no navy, no communications, no air force. Their missiles are scattered. Their drones are blown up everywhere, including their drone manufacturing,” he said.
Trump’s latest assessment comes after he told reporters over the weekend that he wasn’t worried about the price of gasoline.
“We thought oil prices would go up, which they will. They will also go down. They will go down very quickly,” he said.
Trump added that the administration was looking for ways to ease the cost burden on Americans, but that soaring oil prices were worth it because the United States and Israel are working to “get rid of a major cancer on the face of the earth,” referring to the Iranian regime.
“This is a short excursion into something that should have been done for 47 years. It took 47 years to do this and no president had the courage to do it,” Trump said.
But rising pump prices aren’t the only tough sell Trump has to make.
The Trump administration has given mixed messages about its motivations for striking Iran and, in some cases, conflicting reasoning, potentially harming its ability to rally public support. A recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that a majority of Americans oppose U.S. military action in Iran and disapprove of Trump’s treatment of the Middle Eastern country.
