Donald Trump stepped into the Grand Foyer of the White House on Wednesday morning to deliver a statement following a night in which Iran launched over a dozen missiles at a pair of Iraqi bases where U.S. troops are housed. Though there were some indications that Iran purposely limited the possibility of casualties, and post-attack statements from the Iranian foreign minister indicated that this represented the extent of the country’s official response to the U.S. assassination of an Iranian general, it was unclear whether Trump would take this moment to de-escalate the conflict, or would press for retaliation in response to Iran’s actions.
Before a packed room of reporters, Trump lined up both senior White House officials and a collection of Pentagon brass to give the moment a sense that—for once—everyone was on the same page. Trump opened by saying that the American people should be extremely grateful and happy that there were no casualties in the overnight attack. Trump described Iran as “standing down” and credited the relatively light damage to U.S. strategy in dispersing forces.
Trump described the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani as “decisive action” to take out “the world’s worst terrorist” and spent a large section of his speech cataloging the actions of the Iranian general. Trump, echoing what has been the standard patter from Republicans over the last days, described President Barack Obama as having given Iran $180 billion, and repeated claims that Iran’s missiles were paid for by funds provided by the last administration.
In an apparent echo of the way in which Trump attacked NAFTA only to turn around and adopt the same outline of actions for his own version of the treaty, Trump called on signatories to the Iran nuclear deal to pull out of that deal and join the U.S. in creating another deal. Trump also indicated that he wanted NATO to be more involved in the negotiations … a complete flip of his previous positions. At the same time, Trump indicated that he would increase sanctions against Iran, though it was unclear how.
In the middle of the speech, Trump talked about how “big, powerful, lethal and fast” American missiles are, and indicated that there was a new generation of hypersonic missiles on the way—which is genuine news, and amounts to the unveiling of a top-secret weapons system. Russia has been publicly demonstrating hypersonic technology purposely designed to thwart missile defense systems. But until this speech, the United States had not made any announcement that it intended to deploy similar technology.
