In his White House address on April 1, President Donald Trump outlined the “tremendous progress our warriors have made in Iran” and discussed “why Operation Epic Fury is necessary for the safety of America and the security of the free world.”
“This fanatical regime has been chanting, ‘Death to America, death to Israel’ for 47 years,” noted President Trump. “Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our service members with roadside bombs. They were involved in the attack on the USS Cole, and they carried out the countless other heinous acts, including the . . . bloody atrocities of October 7 in Israel. This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran.”
“For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat,” stated President Trump.
“My first preference was always the path of diplomacy, yet the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement,” explained President Trump. “For this reason, in June, I ordered a strike on Iran’s key nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer. But the Iranian regime sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
“They were also rapidly building a vast stockpile of conventional ballistic missiles and would soon have had missiles that could reach the American homeland, Europe and virtually any other place on Earth.”
The objectives of Operation Epic Fury are “very simple and clear,” said President Trump. “We are systematically dismantling the regime’s ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders. . . . We’ve done all of it. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their missiles are just about used up or beaten. Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran’s military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb.”
“The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it,” declared President Trump. He urged countries who do receive oil through the Hormuz Straight to “take care of that passage. . . .We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.”
President Trump said the U.S. military is on track to complete all of its objectives shortly. In the meantime, discussions with Iran are ongoing. While regime change was not the goal, it has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. “The new group is less radical and much more reasonable,” said President Trump. But “if there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.”
“The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B-2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust,” said President Trump. “And we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move. . .we’ll hit them with missiles very hard again. We have all the cards. They have none.”
“[E]very American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the specter of nuclear blackmail,” declared President Trump. “Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world. And . . . when it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”