Donald Trump says if the US hadn’t engaged in the conflict “we would’ve had an Iran with a nuclear weapon”.
“Maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now,” he adds.
For context, the UN, US and EU imposed extensive economic sanctions on Iran from 2010, over suspicions that its nuclear programme was being used to develop a bomb. Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.
Read more on Iran’s nuclear programme, and what the US wants
The president says the US “have beaten [Iran] badly”, adding that Iran is “reduced to little boats with a machine gun on the front of them”.
It comes after the US attacked small Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz. In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said: “We’ve shot down seven small Boats or, as they like to call them, ‘fast’ Boats”.
At the Oval Office, Trump claims Iran started the war with 159 ships, before saying “every single ship they had is resting underwater at the bottom of the sea”.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. So we were informed by US intelligence.