President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Operation Epic Fury in Iran will come to an end in the next two or three weeks, or perhaps even sooner.
Trump’s comments came while fielding questions from reporters after signing an election integrity executive order to ensure mail-in ballots are only given to and returned by eligible voters.
“I think two or three weeks; we’ll leave, because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said while fielding a question about when the war will end during remarks on the Hormuz Strait.
Trump said securing the Strait will be the responsibility of the countries that depend on it for oil, adding that it will probably be secure from threats by the time the U.S. leaves.
Look, the problem with the strait—a guy can take a mine, drop it in the water, and say, ‘Oh, it’s unsafe.’ It’s not like you’re taking out an army, or you’re taking out a country. He can drop it, or he can take a machine gun from the shore and shoot a…few bullets at a ship, or maybe an over-the-shoulder missile, small missiles. That’s not for us, that’ll be for France, that’ll be for whoever is using the strait. But I think when we leave, probably that’s all cleared up.
He added that he heard on Tuesday that many ships were able to travel through the strait.
“We’re negotiating with them right now… again, we have had regime change. Now, regime change was not one of the things I had as a goal. I had one goal: They will have no nuclear weapon and that goal has been attained. They will not have nuclear weapons,” he said.
Trump reiterated his two-week timeline later in his answer.
“But we’re finishing the job, and I think within maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer to do the job, but we want to knock out every single thing they have,” he said.
“Now it’s possible that we’ll make a deal before that because we’ll hit bridges, and we’ve hit some, we’ll hit some bridges. We got a couple of nice bridges in mind. But if they come to the table, that’ll be good,” he added.
Read the full article here