Four days into the joint US-Israel operation in Iran, President Donald Trump told Politico Tuesday that Tehran's launcher supply and armaments are being rapidly depleted – and that he stands ready to engage with whoever inherits power in Iran.
Even as the president conceded Iranian forces were still expected to "keep lobbing missiles for a while," he insisted in the roughly four-minute call that their broader military capacity is being dismantled, Politico reported. "They're running out, and they're running out of areas to shoot them, because they're being decimated," Trump said. "They're running out of launchers."
Video: U.S. B-1 bombers struck inside Iran to degrade Iranian ballistic missile capabilities. Credit: CENTCOM
The assertion was entirely new – neither Monday's Pentagon briefing nor any administration official had aired it before Trump's Politico call.
Rolling waves of Iranian missile and drone strikes have followed since early Saturday, and both the US and the wider Middle East brace for further salvos. Washington closed its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the State Department called on all Americans in the Middle East to evacuate immediately as the war crossed into day four.
Pressed on the US arsenal, the president told Politico, "we have unlimited of the middle, and upper middle, ammunition and things. We save it and we build it."
The president added that "The defense companies are on a rapid tear to build the various things we need. They're under emergency orders. We're making it fast. But we have unlimited, as stupid as [former President Joe] Biden was, he didn't use it."
Those assurances drew a sharp rebuttal from Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who warned of a "potential desperate and disastrous shortage of THAAD and Patriot systems that are necessary to protect our embassies, our bases, our civilians."
Trump said Tuesday that a restructured Iranian government, if one crystallizes from the conflict's aftermath, would find a willing partner in Washington.
Responding to whether the opportunity to work with a future Iranian government still existed, Trump told Politico, "Nope, not too late. 49 [senior Iranian leaders] were killed, don't forget, so that goes pretty deep, right? New ones are emerging. A lot of people want the job. Some of them would be very good."
The president's remarks come as the IDF struck on Tuesday afternoon the Assembly of Experts – Iran's clerical body empowered to select and dismiss the Supreme Leader – near Qom.
