Trump sets end date for US attacks on Iran: “In four or five weeks”

President Donald Trump confirmed that the conflict with Iran is expected to continue for several weeks, according to current projections. However, he emphasized that “whatever the time is, it’s OK,” and said the United States has the capacity to extend the campaign if necessary.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections,” Trump said during the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. “But whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes, we will always and we have from right, from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated that there are currently no American troops on Iranian soil, but stressed that the United States is not ruling out any options.

“No, but we are not going to go into exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said during a press conference.

Marco Rubio: “There absolutely was an imminent threat”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided further details about the operation and the reasoning behind what he described as a “preemptive strike.”

“There absolutely was an imminent threat… We knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” the secretary of state explained.

“We went proactively, in a defensive way, to prevent them from inflicting greater damage,” Rubio said. “Had we not done so, there would have been hearings at the Capitol about how we knew this was going to happen and didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.”

“The purpose was to destroy that missile capability. Why does Iran want that ballistic missile capability? What they are trying to do and have been trying to do for a very long time, is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield where they can hide behind. Meaning there would come a point where they have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and can inflict so much damage, that no one can do anything about their nuclear program. That is what they were trying to do,” he added.

The Trump administration clarified that the primary objective of the mission was not regime change, though it has encouraged the Iranian population to seize the opportunity presented by the situation.

“The bottom line here is that whoever governs that country a year from now, they’re not gonna have these ballistic missiles and they’re not gonna have these drones to threaten us. That is the objective of this mission,” Rubio stated.

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