US President Donald Trump has said in an interview aired Sunday that it would only take two weeks to hit “every single target” in Iran, adding that the Islamic Republic was “militarily defeated.”
In the interview with independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson, which was recorded last week, he also called NATO a “paper tiger” and accused Washington’s allies of failing to assist in the campaign against Tehran.
The comments come as Iran is reported to have responded to the latest US proposal on ending a conflict that began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
“They’re militarily defeated. In their own minds, maybe they don’t know that. But I think they do,” Trump said in the interview, before adding: “That doesn’t mean they’re done.”
He suggested the US military could “go in for two more weeks and do every single target. We have certain targets that we wanted, and we’ve done probably 70 per cent of them, but we have other targets that we could conceivably hit.”
“But even if we didn’t do that, you know, that would just be final touches,” Trump said.
On NATO, he said the alliance “has proven to be a paper tiger. They weren’t there to help.”
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