Trump Claims Iran Missiles Could Have Hit America ‘soon’

President Donald Trump said Monday that the broad military strikes on Iran he ordered over the weekend were necessary because Tehran would have “soon” been able to hit targets inside America with ballistic missiles.

“The regime's conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to American air forces stationed overseas,” Trump said at the start of an unrelated Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House.

“The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.”

It is the first time Trump has laid out a case before the American people, beyond prerecorded video messages and interviews with a handful of journalists, for why the country should put its troops in harm’s way since the strikes began Saturday morning. Iran is not known to have ballistic missiles capable of reaching America’s shores, and so far the administration has not provided any evidence to suggest they soon could.

Trump said Monday that his administration had “projected four to five weeks” for the conflict, but that “we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it.” He argued that Iran’s ballistic missile program was aimed at shielding what he said was a renewed nuclear program, which would have put the U.S. “under threat.”

The specter of a protracted war is already spooking Americans. Nearly six in ten Americans disapproved of Trump’s decision to strike Iran, according to a CNN poll conducted after the weekend military action. Forty-one percent of Americans approved of the action, while fifty-nine percent disapproved.

The poll was conducted via text message between Feb. 28 and March 1, and surveyed 1,004 Americans.

Trump ordered the bombing of Iran on Saturday morning after months of negotiations to halt Tehran’s nuclear program yielded no results. The strikes, in coordination with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, alongside other top Iranian leaders.

Trump first struck Iran in June of 2025, aimed at eliminating their nuclear weapon program. He said in his White House remarks he warned Iran to halt the program after the strikes, “but they ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

The Saturday strikes targeted several cities throughout Iran and were aimed at decapitating the regime’s leadership and crippling its military capabilities. Trump has called for Iranians to rise up and take their government back.

Trump laid out his three objectives in carrying out the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since Iraq – destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities, annihilating their navy, and halting the possibility of “the world's number one sponsor of terror” from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The president has not indicated who he would like to see take over leadership in Iran, telling CNN on Monday, “we don’t know who the leadership is. We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing.”

The Iranian retaliatory strikes in Gulf states have killed four U.S. service members, and Trump has said more Americans may die.

“We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen,” Trump said in a Truth Social video on Sunday. “And sadly, there will be likely be more, before it ends. That’s the way it is.”