Trump says ‘big wave’ of attacks on Iran is yet to come

US President Donald Trump says the “big wave” of attacks on Iran in the current conflict is yet to come.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” Trump told CNN on Monday, adding: “The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

Trump told CNN in a nine-minute phone interview on Monday morning that the US military is “knocking the crap” out of Iran.

On how long the war might last, the president said: “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”

Trump claimed it was unclear who was now leading the country.

“They don’t even know who’s leading them now,” Trump said. “We went down 49” Iranian leaders, he asserted.

With more than four dozen Iranian leaders killed, “We don’t know who’s leading the country now,” Trump added. “They don’t know who’s leading.”

So far, the president said, “the biggest surprise” has been Iran’s attacks on Arab countries in the region: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates

“We were surprised,” Trump said. “We told them, ‘We’ve got this,’ and now they want to fight. And they’re aggressively fighting. They were going to be very little involved and now they insist on being involved.”

Trump told The New York Post on Monday that he’s not ruling out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary.”

At a press conference, the president said the US offensive in Iran could also continue for longer if necessary.

“Whatever it takes, we will always and we have right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said. “We’ll do it.”

Trump said that the US forces were “well ahead” of time projections.

Regarding the rationale for striking Iran again, he said the rapid progress of the Iranian missile programme was a factor in the decision to strike Iran.

“The regime’s conventional ballistic missile programme was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.”

“The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” the US president added.

Trump levelled serious accusations at the government in Tehran with regard to the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Time and again, the US thought it had reached an agreement, only to find that the Iranians were backtracking, Trump said at his first press conference since the US attacks on Iran began on Saturday.

“And we thought we had a deal, but then they backed out, and they came back and we thought we had a deal, and they backed out,” he explained. “I said, you can’t deal with these people.”

Trump once again sharply criticized the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran and defended his decision to withdraw from it.

He called the agreement concluded under president Barack Obama – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – a terrible and dangerous document.