Donald Trump has laid out four goals in Iran and said the US campaign had been projected to last four to five weeks but could “go far longer than that”.
On Monday, the US president offered his most extensive comments yet about the war, going beyond two video messages and a series of brief phone interviews with reporters that offered sometimes conflicting objectives.
But Trump undercut the gravity of his remarks by abruptly pivoting to tout his plans for a new White House ballroom, boasting that it would be the “most beautiful ballroom in the world”, coming in “under budget” and “ahead of schedule” for “$400m or less”.
Trump said he had ordered the attack on Iran to thwart Tehran’s nuclear development and a ballistic missile programme that was “growing rapidly and dramatically” and “posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas”.
That was a different justification than the one Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, gave later on Monday. After a closed-door briefing with US congressional members, Rubio told reporters that Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to make pre-emptive strikes.
Rubio’s explanation worried some US lawmakers.
“There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians,” said Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee. “There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”
Trump says Iran war to last four to five weeks but could go ‘far longer’
The president asserted without evidence that Iran “would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America” – a claim disputed by national security experts. Trump added that other countries backed US efforts to stop Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon but “they just didn’t have the courage to say so.”
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US-Israel war on Iran dramatically expands across Middle East
The war in the Middle East triggered by the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran expanded dramatically on Monday, with casualties and destruction reported across at least nine countries in under 10 hours.
Israeli and US warplanes launched a fresh wave of strikes across Iran, where the Iranian Red Crescent Society said more than 500 people have been killed since the conflict began. Israel also launched an intense wave of attacks into Lebanon after Hezbollah struck at northern Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on Saturday that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Three US fighter jets mistakenly shot down over Kuwait
Three US fighter jets were mistakenly shot down over Kuwait early on Monday in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, military officials said. All six crew members ejected safely.
According to a statement from US Central Command (Centcom), Kuwait’s air defences fired on the F-15 war planes during a combat mission on the third day of conflict following Saturday’s launch of US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
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UK ‘took far too long’ to let US use its airbases to attack Iran, sats Trump
The UK “took far too long” to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran, Donald Trump has said.
The US president added that he was “very disappointed” in Keir Starmer over the British government’s deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as a means to preserve the status of the UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, part of the Indian Ocean archipegalo.
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Trump neck rash from ‘preventative’ skin treatment, says White House
Donald Trump was seen with a rash on the side of his neck during the Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday, fueling more speculation about the state of the president’s health.
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What else happened today:
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Melania Trump became the first spouse of a sitting world leader to preside over the UN security council on Monday, calling on member states to protect children’s access to education days after Iranian state media reported that an airstrike killed at least 165 people at a girls’ school in southern Iran.
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Officials in Texas are continuing to investigate a weekend mass shooting at an Austin bar by a man wearing a “Property of Allah” hoodie as an act of potential terrorism, as fears rise over the possibility of further attacks following US airstrikes on Iran.
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Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, spent $1.2m of taxpayers’ money per day to open and operate the notorious immigration jail known as Alligator Alcatrazcourt records obtained by the independent investigative news website the Florida Tributary reveal.
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Videos of Bill Clinton, the former US president, and Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, answering questions about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released on Monday by a House committee investigating the late financier.
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Donald Trump said on Monday he will attend the White House correspondents’ association dinner for the first time as president.
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Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who served as interior secretary during Donald Trump’s first administration, said he would not seek re-election to a fifth term in the US Houseciting health concerns.
Catching up? Here’s what happened Sunday 1 March.
