President Donald Trump told The Washington Post early Saturday that his main concern is “freedom” for the Iranian people as the U.S. launched military strikes in the country.
A U.S. official said a multiday operation against Iran began at about 1 a.m. Eastern time with a salvo of ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and air-launched munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy jets.
Iran quickly launched counterstrikes in response to the attack, which the Trump administration has named “Operation Epic Fury.” Multiple U.S. military bases were targeted by Iran, the official said, including the support facility for its 5th Fleet ships in Bahrain, according to the country’s state-run news service.
While the operations are ongoing, no U.S. service members have been injured, the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not yet been publicly announced. Israel said it also launched attacks on Iran on Saturday.
“All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump said in a brief phone interview shortly after 4 a.m., when asked what he hopes his legacy will be as a result of the military action and a push for regime change in Iran.
“I want a safe nation, and that’s what we’re going to have,” the president said, his first reportable remarks since announcing “major combat operations” in a video message around 2:30 a.m.
Trump spoke from Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida, where he arrived Friday night just hours before the military strikes began. He spoke to The Post as television news played in the background.
Despite his previous criticism of U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern wars — particularly American lives lost during efforts to topple and install new regimes — Trump on Saturday made the case for the United States helping to bring about regime change in the country. In the video address, Trump urged Iranians once the strikes cease to “take over your government,” telling them “this will be probably your only chance for generations.”
Trump also conceded that U.S. troops were putting their lives at risk in this effort.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties,” Trump said in his taped remarks. “That often happens in war. But we’re doing this, not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Less than a year ago, while visiting the Middle East, Trump decried the “so-called nation builders” who “wrecked far more nations than they built.”
“And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand,” Trump said in May at an investment conference in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
Now, the president is portraying himself as the one willing to assume substantial risk to save the Iranian people, urging them to “seize control” of their “destiny” with U.S. help.
“No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight,” Trump declared in the eight-minute video, which he said was filmed shortly after the attacks began in the early hours Saturday. He stood behind a lectern, wearing a white “USA” ball cap.
“Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond,” he said, speaking to the Iranian people. “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.”
Trump’s case to the American people for taking the country to war with Iran has never been urgently articulated.
While the president said the objective of the strikes is to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” in his video about the attacks, Trump accused Iran of a litany of sins: from working to build a nuclear weapon to roadside bombs to a campaign of “mass terror” he said the regime has carried out against the U.S. “for 47 years.”
Trump invoked the 1979 hostage crisis, in which 66 Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 Americans were killed. He said Iran was “probably involved” in the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen.
“I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration,” Trump said, “and there is no military on Earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.”
While speaking to The Post, the president did not take additional questions about the scope of ongoing operations or the potential for U.S. troop involvement on the ground. On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with The Post that any operation Trump initiates in Iran would not result in the U.S. becoming involved in a drawn-out war.
“The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen,” Vance said.
Foreign policy experts have warned that, unlike the limited strikes the U.S. launched against Iranian nuclear sites in June, a wider conflict with Tehran could embroil Washington for years.
Trump’s views on U.S. intervention in the Middle East have evolved over time, with the president initially expressing support for the Iraq War at its outset more than two decades ago, before months later calling it a “terrible mistake.”
He built his political brand as an “America First” president opposed to adventures overseas, decrying the Iraq War during his 2016 campaign and in 2024 pledging a “stop to the endless wars and a return to peace in the Middle East.”
“We defeated [Islamic State] in record time, but we had no wars,” Trump said in his November 2024 election night victory speech, referring to his first term. “They said, he will start a war. I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
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