U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to escalate the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Iran, promising to target new “groups and people” in the Islamic Republic.
“Iran is no longer the ‘Bully of the Middle East,’ they are, instead, ‘the loser of the Middle East’,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Trump dismissed the public apology by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to neighboring countries, calling it a sign Tehran has “surrendered.” Pezeshkian said earlier Saturday that his government regrets the retaliatory strikes that Tehran has conducted on its neighbors in response to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran and said Iranian forces would not target neighboring states unless an attack against Iran is launched directly from that country.
The U.S. president said the American military will be ramping up its attacks soon, posting: “Today Iran will be hit very hard!” The Pentagon will expand its range of targets to “groups and people that were not considered for targeting” until now, he said.
Trump’s post on Saturday followed his demand on Friday for an “unconditional surrender” by the Islamic Republic’s leaders. Pezeshkian rejected that dictate as a “dream that they should take to their grave.”
Trump specified unconditional surrender after days of mixed signals from the White House on the justifications and aims of the war on Iran, later adding that “surrender” could be a complete defeat of Iran’s military forces.
“Unconditional surrender could be” an announcement by the Iranian regime, Trump said. “But it could also be when they can’t fight any longer because they don’t have anyone or anything to fight with,” the president told Axios in an interview.
The back-and-forth between Tehran and Washington came as intense Iranian fire targeted the Gulf Arab states early Saturday as Israel and the United States kept up their airstrikes targeting the Islamic Republic, the Associated Press reported. There were repeated attacks Saturday morning on Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the AP report.
An estimated 1,332 Iranian civilians have been killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes over the past week, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday.
Source:
www.politico.eu