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U.S. President Donald Trump on March 8 said the decision on when to end the Iran War will be a mutual one that he will make with input from Israel.
“I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account,” Trump told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview.
Asked whether he thought it would be necessary for Israel to continue their campaign even after the United States decides to stop its airstrikes, the U.S. president said, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
Trump also said that Iran was “going to destroy Israel and everything else around it,” adding, “we’ve worked together [with Israel]. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.”
On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel jointly launched an attack on Iran, with the Islamic Republic’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, being killed in the first salvo of the war.
On March 9, the Iranian regime chose Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, as the next leader.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a March 4 post on X that whoever is appointed to replace the deceased Iranian leader “will be an unequivocal target for elimination.”
“[Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and I have instructed the [Israel Defense Forces] to prepare and act by all means to carry out the mission as an integral part of the objectives of Operation ‘Lion’s Roar,’” Katz said, using Israel’s term for the military offensive against Iran and its proxies.
Trump similarly told ABC News on March 8 that Iran’s next leader is “not going to last long” if he does not get approval from the United States.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 6 that Washington expects Operation Epic Fury “to last four to six weeks” to achieve its objectives, “and we are well on our way to achieving those objectives.”
Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing outside the White House that, during the operation to date, more than 30 Iranian vessels and ships have been sunk and that the Iranian navy has “been deemed combat ineffective.”
She added that the United States has taken out the ballistic missile threat posed by Iran, and that in six days since the war started, “retaliatory ballistic missile strikes from Iran are now down 90 percent.”
“Ultimately, the president has made it very clear: He wants to take out the threat of Iran to the United States, and Operation Epic Fury as well on its way to doing that.”
Operation Epic Fury is the name for the United States’s offensive against Iran.
Last week, the Pentagon said there is no expansion of military objectives in Iran and that the operation was moving onto its next phase.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said on March 5 during a news briefing at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, that the next objective is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile industrial base.
“We’re not just hitting what they have—we’re destroying their ability to rebuild,” Cooper said. “As we transition to the next phase of this operation, we will systemically dismantle Iran’s missile production capability for the future, and that’s absolutely in progress.”