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President Donald Trump joked on Friday morning about the fate of Iranian officials in the wake of Israel’s recent airstrike, according to CNN’s Dana Bash.
After months of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure early Friday, taking out at least 20 senior Iranian commanders and inflicting a significant blow to Tehran’s government. Two of the most prominent officials killed in the strikes were Gen. Hossein Salami, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces.
Bash spoke on Friday about her phone call with Trump, where she asked him about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s initial statement about Israel’s strikes, which did not explicitly say that the U.S. supported them.
“We, of course, support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it,” Trump said, according to Bash. “It was a very successful attack. Iran should have listened to me when I said – you know, I gave them, I don‘t know if you know, but I gave them a 60-day warning. And today is day 61.”
“They should now come to the table to make a deal before it’s too late. It will be too late for them. You know, the people I was dealing with are dead,” he added, though he wouldn’t give specific names, only that the “hardliners” were dead.
“This is as a result of the attack last night?” Bash asked him.
“Yeah. They didn’t die of the flu. They didn’t die of COVID,” Bash described him saying “quite sarcastically.”
Trump also told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Friday that “The Iranians were hit 10 times worse than they thought they would be.”
“They weren’t ready to negotiate. I think they may be now. We’ll see,” Trump said regarding the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Senior U.S. officials told Fox News that a long list of nuclear scientists and military leaders were targeted by Israel’s surprise airstrikes Friday.
The officials added that 90% of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, as well as other senior military officers and other Iranian leaders, may have been targeted in the strikes.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
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