US president Donald Trump has said the US-Israel attack on Iran was pre-emptive and has backed surviving officials inside the Tehran regime to assume leadership in the country.
In a joint press appearance with German chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump said the “lunatics” in Tehran “were going to attack first”.
This comes a day after US secretary of state Marco Rubio said Israel was preparing a strike. On Tuesday, Rubio reversed his position to agree with Trump, who insisted his hand was not forced by Israel.
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand but Israel was ready and we were ready,” said Trump, adding the “powerful impact” of the attacks since Saturday meant “virtually everything there has been knocked out”.
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“They no longer have air protection, any detection facilities at all left, they are going to be in for a lot of hurt,” he said.
Asked about the future leadership of Iran, Trump said the “leader of the pack is gone”, a nod to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He described Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of Iran’s last shah, as a “nice person ... but someone from within might be more appropriate” to lead a new government – while conceding there were no guarantees on the path ahead.
“I guess the worst case is, we do this and someone takes over who is as bad as the previous person,” said the president.
With Merz listening in, Trump spoke of a mutual “great affinity” with the German chancellor who “has been helping us out, has been very nice actually”.
Echoing remarks on Sunday, Merz said Germany was “supporting the United States and Israel to get rid of this terrible terrorist regime” but was focused on “the day after”.
“We have to talk about the strategy of what is following after this regime is away,” he said. “We have a high interest in common approach.”
By comparison, Trump said he was “not happy” with the UK, calling prime minister Keir Starmer “no Winston Churchill” over his Chagos Islands handover to Mauritius. This meant meant long detours for Iran-bound US aircraft, which could not use Diego Garcia, one of the islands, as a base.
The president hit out, too, at Spain as “terrible” and “very, very unco-operative” for failing meet Nato spending targets and declining to open its bases to Iran-bound US aircraft.
“We are going to cut off all trade with Spain, we don’t want to have anything to do with Spain,” he said.
Merz, asked in the Oval Office how he would intervene over the US “punishing” Spain, vowed to press Madrid to boost defence spending, which is two percentage points short of the agreed Nato level of 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product.
On trade, Trump was less complimentary towards his visitor, saying the US should hit Germany “very hard” and introduce new tariffs on European countries higher than those recently struck down by the US supreme court.
Ahead of talks, Merz said any peace agreement on Ukraine “has to preserve its territory and security interests”.
