WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Friday that American forces would strike Iranian targets “very hard” in the coming days, signaling an intensification of the US-Israeli campaign as the war in the Middle East approaches its third week.
Washington and its ally launched the offensive on February 28 with strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, triggering a widening regional war that has rattled global energy markets and drawn missile and drone attacks across the Gulf.
“We’re going to be hitting them very hard over the next week,” Trump told Fox News Radio, adding that he believed Iran’s leadership could eventually be toppled by its own people.
“I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons,” Trump said. “I think it’s a very big hurdle... It’ll happen, but it probably will be, maybe not immediately.”
Trump’s remarks came as US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Washington and Israel had already struck more than 15,000 targets since launching an air campaign against Iran on February 28.
