Iran war marks ‘beginning of a new country’, says Donald Trump

Donald Trump has said the US war with Iran is “very complete” but it is also “the beginning” of “a new country”.

The US president’s comments at a press conference in Florida seemed to suggest Washington might be engaged in the building of a new Iran.

Though he has long professed an “America First” policy prioritising the US, Mr Trump suggested the war was for the benefit of other nations, especially those dependent on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.

“I mean, we’re doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China,” he said.

Mr Trump told reporters that the war began because Iran was starting work on a new site for developing material for nuclear weapons.

He said the new site was meant to replace facilities bombed last year by the US.

“But they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site — and that was protected by granite,” Mr Trump said.

The president added that Tehran wanted to use the “exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon”, claiming that Iran would have otherwise been able to take over the Middle East.

The president told reporters the pick of Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father as Iran’s supreme leader would lead to “more of the same” for a country he seeks to change.

Mr Trump said it “would be inappropriate” to say whether Iran’s new leader would be targeted for a lethal assault as was his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He said he liked “the idea” of a leader drawn from an “internal” group of candidates, saying this process “works well” with Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodriguez, after the capture by US forces of Nicolas Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the US.

Mr Trump also elevated his expectations by saying he would like a candidate in Iran who was “internal and eternal”.

“If I didn’t hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first,” the president added.

“I believe upon information and belief. They were going to take over the Middle East.”

The president erroneously claimed that Tehran has access to the American Tomahawk cruise missile, the weapon likely to have been used to strike a girls’ school in Iran, killing 165 people.

Asked if the US would accept responsibility for the strike, he argued that the cruise missile, which is made by the American defence contractor Raytheon, is “sold and used by other countries” and that Iran “also has some Tomahawks”.

“Whether it’s Iran or somebody else… a Tomahawk is very generic,” he claimed.

While Raytheon sells the missile to allied countries such as Japan and Australia, there is no evidence to suggest that Iran has got its hands on the cruise missile.

When asked why he was the only person in his administration making the claim, Mr Trump replied: “Because I just don’t know enough about it.”

He added that “whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report”.