Trump says Iran attacks could last a month or longer

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that war with Iran could last a month or longer.

“It’s OK,” he continued, if even more time is needed to complete the operation, dismissing potential readiness concerns, even as he maintained that plans were ahead of schedule.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it’s OK,” Trump said during a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House as he honored four service members who were killed by Iranian retaliatory strikes over the weekend. “Whatever it takes. … Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”

He said a four-week plan to remove Iran’s military leadership has already been completed. “And as you know, that was done in about an hour,” he said. “So we’re ahead of schedule there by a lot.”

Trump listed four objectives for the U.S. military operation known as “Epic Fury”: degrading Iran’s missile capabilities, the destruction of Iran’s navy, ensuring it could never obtain a nuclear weapon and containing its proxy forces by ensuring Iran cannot “continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

He said the military is prepared to continue the operation “as long as necessary.”

During his remarks, Trump also pushed back against what he said were suggestions that he could lose interest in the conflict if it continued past “a week or two,” saying, “I don’t get bored.”

“There’s nothing boring about it,” Trump added.

He justified the timing of the strikes by saying that this was “our last best chance” to target the threat from the Iranian regime after talks to reach a deal fell apart last week.

“We thought we had a deal, and they backed out,” he said.

Those talks played out in Geneva, where Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, told his American counterparts that Iran had an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium, a senior Trump administration official said. He told NBC News in an interview Sunday that he decided to attack when “they weren’t willing to stop their nuclear research.”

Other military leaders have said the war with Iran won’t be “endless,” though the full scale and scope of the mission remains unclear for now. Trump has also floated different timelines.

Trump has acknowledged the possibility that combat forces may be needed.

Earlier Monday, Trump declined to rule out the possibility of sending troops into Iran, suggesting in an interview with the New York Post that he could have boots on the ground. He said that while other leaders may be averse to doing so, he is not.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said.

In the same interview, when asked about the timeline, Trump predicted that the operation was “going to go pretty quickly.”