U.S. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that American military operations targeting Iran remain far from complete, as armed conflicts deepened and Tehran broadened its regional offensive across the Gulf.
Two weeks after fighting reignited between the adversarial nations, Trump claimed that the scale of destruction would leave Iran reeling for decades.
”If we left right now, it would take Iran 20, 25 years to rebuild,” he said. “We’re not finished at all…we’re not leaving right now.”
American forces completed an eleventh consecutive night of bombardment, with military officials stating the latest strikes targeted military facilities to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz”.
During his remarks, Trump pinpointed Pickaxe Mountain—a subterranean nuclear facility adjacent to Natanz that Western intelligence fears is being constructed for unannounced uranium enrichment—as a imminent objective.
“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” Trump said.
He acknowledged that while he typically keeps military targets secret, “there’s not a thing they can do about it”.
Tehran responded with direct threats. State broadcaster IRIB reported that the Khatam Al-Anbiya military command warned any bombardment of the facility would be viewed “as an expansion of war in the region,” vowing retaliation against “all the interests of America, the allies and supporters”.
Hostilities spread across neighboring Gulf states as Bahrain intercepted incoming Iranian strikes while air raid sirens blared nationwide. Defense forces in Jordan and Kuwait also reported engaging incoming missiles and drones.
By Wednesday morning, Kuwaiti military officials confirmed active air defense engagements against incoming Iranian drones.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards later took credit for strikes in Jordan, claiming to have hit a “complex housing US terrorist forces in the region of Rukban.” The military branch had earlier asserted responsibility for strikes targeting U.S.-affiliated installations in Bahrain and Kuwait, such as administrative bases, radar units, and air defenses.
In a statement carried by the state-run news agency IRNA, the Revolutionary Guards warned:
“With this radar sweep, the enemy should prepare for even more decisive and powerful waves of drone and missile attacks,” the Guards said in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.