The White House on Wednesday touted achieving a ceasefire and said the United States “exceeded” all military objectives in the Iran war within the initially projected time frame.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt underscored the accomplishment during a press briefing after President Donald Trump’s announcement of the two-week ceasefire on Tuesday night.
“With respect to the two-week ceasefire announced by President Trump last night, this is a victory for the United States of America that the president and our incredible military made happen,” Leavitt told reporters.
“From the very beginning of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump stated this would be a four-to-six week military operation to dismantle the military threat posed by the radical Islamic Iranian regime,” she added.
Leavitt stressed that the United States “achieved and exceeded” its core objectives in the war in just over five weeks.
“The U.S. military destroyed Iran’s defense industrial base, crushing the regime’s ability to manufacture weapons that they and their proxies use to maim and kill Americans and terrorize the world,” she said.
“Iran’s ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long-range drones has also been set back by years compared to where it was six weeks ago, prior to the launch of Operation Epic Fury,” she added.
Iran’s navy was destroyed, its ability to sponsor terrorism has been substantially mitigated, and it is unable to attain a nuclear weapon thanks to Operation Epic Fury, according to Leavitt.
The press secretary said the United States hit over 13,000 targets in the 38-day war, including 450 strikes on Iranian ballistic missiles and 800 strikes on Iranian “drone launching units and storage facilities.”
Leavitt detailed how the ceasefire came to be, noting that Iran’s first 10-point proposal to end the war was “fundamentally unserious” and was wholly rejected by Trump, contrary to “false” reports from some outlets claiming the U.S. viewed the proposal as acceptable.
As Trump’s Tuesday deadline approached, the regime proposed “a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan” to the United States, which Trump concluded “was a workable basis” considering the United States’s 15-point plan.
“The president will only make a deal that serves in the best interest of the United States of America, and his negotiating team will focus on this effort over the next two weeks, so long as the Strait of Hormuz remains open with no limitations or delays,” she said.
Read the full article here