WASHINGTON:

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States had begun “major combat operations” in Iran, warning that there may be US casualties.

The strikes, which Trump said were aimed at destroying Iranian missiles and annihilating its navy, follow repeated US-Israeli warnings that they would strike Iran again if it pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

“I do not make this statement lightly. The Iranian regime seeks to kill,” Trump said in a video shared on Truth Social and X.

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties that often happens in war, but we’re doing this, not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”

Trump told the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s armed forces, to lay down their weapons, promising that they would be granted immunity.

The other option, according to Trump, is “certain death.”

Washington and Tehran held a series of talks in recent weeks about Iran’s nuclear ambition. The most recent one was held on Thursday with no deal.

“Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades. They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump said.

“The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years,” Trump said, adding that American naval and commercial vessels have also been attacked.

“It’s been mass terror, and we’re not gonna put up with it any longer,” the president said.

He goes on to say, “from Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained, and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts.”

“And it was Iran’s proxy Hamas,” Trump says that “launched the monstrous October 7 attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people including 46 Americans while taking 12 of our citizens hostage.” The American president terms this brutal, saying it was “something like the world has never seen before.”

Trump termed Iran the “number one state-sponsor of terror,” and said it recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the streets as they protested.

Referring to the US, Trump says it has always been its policy, and in particular that of his administration, that “this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.”

“I’ll say it again,” Trump emphasised, “they can never have a nuclear weapon.” This is why, the president continued, “in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime’s nuclear programme at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.”

After that attack, he said, “we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons.” He added that the US sought, repeatedly, to make a deal, but said that Iran “just wanted to practice evil.”

“Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades,” Trump said, adding that the state rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions and “we can’t take it anymore.”

He adds that Iran attempted to rebuild their nuclear programme and to continue developing long-range missiles “that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”

Just imagine how, the president says in the video, how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had, and actually were armed with, nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message.

For these reasons, Trump said, the United States military “has undertaken a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical, dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”