President Donald Trump has declared that the United States has already won its war with Iran, but has insisted he will accept nothing less than what he called a total victory. Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, he told veterans and military families that the end of the conflict was now a matter of timing.
“We won,” Mr Trump said during his address at the Memorial Amphitheater, after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “We want to make sure we have a total victory, not a 93% victory. It’s just a question of when we want to end it.”
The president, who was joined by First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, recast the origins of the conflict, which began in February. “America did not start a war with Iran,” he said. “Iran has been waging war on America since 1979. This should have been taken care of a long time ago.”
Mr Trump said American forces had inflicted heavy damage on Iran, claiming it would take Tehran 25 years to rebuild what had been destroyed, and said he hoped no further destruction would be needed. He said the operation had begun seven months ago and credited B-2 bombers with preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
He also put the American death toll at 18 service members, a figure reporters have described as disputed, and compared it with the far higher losses of the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Veterans honoured at Arlington
Much of the speech was devoted to the veterans in the audience. Mr Trump honoured Marine veteran Dale Garner, a survivor of the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American service members, an attack a US court later found Iran responsible for. He also recognised Jack Myers, 103, a Second World War gunner who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and Colonel Douglas Moore, a Vietnam medevac pilot credited with 1,874 missions.
Turning to veterans’ care, the president said his administration had cut the Department of Veterans Affairs claims backlog by 71% in less than two years and secured housing for nearly 100,000 homeless veterans, and he pledged to end veteran homelessness.
Venezuela and the triumphal arch
Mr Trump also pointed to the recent operation in Venezuela, saying the United States had won the war in 48 minutes, and repeated his claim that American forces had captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, who is now in custody in New York. “To the victor belong the spoils,” he said.
Near the close of his address, he returned to his plan for a triumphal arch honouring the armed forces, saying it would soon be dedicated to veterans. The 250-foot gilded arch planned near the Lincoln Memorial has been approved by a planning body but is frozen by a temporary court order, with lawsuits pending, including one brought by the Kennedy family.
The speech came a week after midterm elections in which Vice President Vance said the Iran conflict had contributed to Republican losses, a view Mr Trump did not dispute. He closed by promising veterans their service would be remembered. “And the nation you served, we will never, ever let it fail,” he said.