President Donald Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting on Wednesday, March 12th that Iran is “about to surrender.”
Trump credited the results of “Operation Epic Fury,” a coordinated U.S.-Israel campaign of drone and missile strikes, for weakening Iran’s leadership and military capacity. Highlighting the effectiveness of the strikes in the region, he claimed
I got rid of a cancer that was threatening us all.
Trump also criticized Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, calling the country’s top officials “deranged scumbags” and asserting it was his honor to target them. He acknowledged that Iran’s leadership remains fragmented, noting that
nobody knows who is the leader, so there is no one that can announce surrender.
Meanwhile, Iran’s new supreme leader, who has yet to appear publicly, vowed to seek revenge for the deaths caused by the ongoing conflict with the U.S. and Israel. According to a statement attributed to Khamenei,
A limited amount of this revenge has so far taken concrete form, but until it is fully achieved, this case will remain among our priorities.
The statement also declared that Iran would pursue compensation from the enemy, seize property if necessary, or destroy equivalent assets if their demands were not met.
