Trump Applauds Attack On Iran As Strikes Reverberate Throughout The Middle East

As the conflict in Iran stretched across its second day, President Donald Trump positioned his Sunday media tour as something of a victory lap, applauding the strikes while holding the door open for renewed diplomatic efforts to quell the violence.

“Nobody can believe the success we're having. Forty-eight leaders are gone in one shot,” he told Fox News’ Jacqui Henrich on Sunday morning. “And it's moving along rapidly.”

A joint U.S. and Israeli military campaign — which the Pentagon has dubbed Operation Epic Fury — teed off early on Saturday, killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a swath of some of his closest and most senior advisers. Many of them, Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday, were at the center of stalled negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program that presaged the U.S. attacks.

But a fresh round of talks with the country’s new leadership will commence shortly, he said.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,”

In the meantime, Trump, who told The Atlantic that many of the Iranian diaspora in the U.S. are “extremely happy” with his decision to strike Iran, is boasting of a successful campaign against the Iranian Navy on Truth Social.

“I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” he wrote in his post. “We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters.”

Also on Sunday morning, three U.S. troops were killed at an undisclosed location, U.S. Central Command announced, and five more were seriously wounded, the first deaths faced by Americans in the conflict.

Trump has yet to address Americans directly or publicly address Congress in the wake of the U.S.-Israel joint operation, which Democrats think could serve as yet another boost for their party ahead of the midterm elections.

“This is not a king,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on Sunday. “He cannot do this on his own. But it’s absolutely essential right now that he comes and explains what is the goal.”

Warner is far from the only Democrat calling for more transparency from the White House. Among that group are Sen. Mark Kelly, who told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he wants “to hear from the White House what their strategy is going forward,” and Sen. Adam Schiff, who said the president “has made no case to the American people.”

“He sought no authorization from Congress,” Schiff (D-Calif.) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We need to return ASAP and take up a vote on the war powers resolution Tim Kaine, Rand Paul, Senator Schumer and I have introduced. But this case has not been made, and we just can't predict the consequences of this action.”