President Trump returned to Washington on Sunday night and told ABC News he eliminated Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before the regime could act on what American intelligence believes was a 2024 attempt to kill him.
"I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first," Trump said.
The Ayatollah's death was confirmed Saturday night, following a military campaign that struck the heart of Tehran and dismantled Iran's top leadership. By Monday morning, the region was still shaking. Israeli forces continued hitting targets across Iran and launched fresh strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran reportedly struck back at Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, according to The New York Times. Three US service members were killed in retaliatory strikes in Kuwait.
This is the most decisive American action against the Iranian regime in decades. And it is moving fast.
Trump told The Daily Mail the campaign was always planned as a compressed operation.
It's always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so. It's always been about a four-week process so - as strong as it is, it's a big country, it'll take four weeks - or less.
The strike's effectiveness went beyond Khamenei himself. Trump told ABC News that the attack "knocked out most of the candidates" for succession. The regime's bench, in other words, was on the field when the field was hit.
It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.
That is not merely a military success. It is a structural decapitation. The Iranian regime's Revolutionary Guards, its political hierarchy, and its chain of command absorbed a blow that no amount of proxy warfare prepared them for.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that the campaign is not winding down. He said the military was "striking the heart of Tehran with increasing strength, which will increase even more in the coming days."
Israeli forces simultaneously carried out what the IDF called a "targeted attack" on senior Hezbollah members in Beirut and southern Lebanon. The military urged people in nearly 50 villages in eastern and southern Lebanon to evacuate, telling residents to move at least 1,000 meters from Hezbollah positions. Roads out of Beirut's southern suburbs and through southern Lebanon gridlocked early Monday.
The IDF framed the Lebanon operations as a direct response to Hezbollah's decision to join the wider conflict:
The IDF will operate against Hezbollah's decision to join the campaign, and will not enable the organization to constitute a threat to the State of Israel and harm the civilians of northern Israel.
A second IDF statement was blunter: Hezbollah "brings ruin to the State of Lebanon," and the IDF "will forcefully respond to such actions."
More than one million people were displaced in Lebanon when a monthslong low-level conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into full-fledged war in September 2024. The current strikes suggest that displacement may deepen before it recedes.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun directed his frustration not at Israel but at Hezbollah. He said the group's rocket launches from Lebanese soil "target all the efforts and endeavors exerted by the Lebanese state to keep Lebanon away from the dangerous military confrontations taking place in the region."
He went further:
Persisting in using Lebanon once again as a platform for proxy wars in which we have no involvement will expose our country to risks once more.
That is a remarkable statement from the president of a country currently absorbing Israeli strikes. Aoun is not blaming Jerusalem. He is blaming Tehran's proxy for dragging his nation into someone else's war. The distinction matters. It signals that even within the region, the consensus about who bears responsibility for this chaos points back to the same address: the Iranian regime.
Three US service members were killed in Kuwait. Trump addressed their sacrifice in a Truth Social video on Sunday afternoon, his second address to the nation in 48 hours.
America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against basically, civilization.
He called the fallen service members "true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives." He said US personnel had been in touch with the families and that he would meet with them, adding he might travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware or invite families to the White House.
Trump did not sugarcoat what lies ahead.
Sadly, there will likely be more, before it ends. That's the way it is. Likely be more.
That honesty is essential. A commander-in-chief who acknowledges the cost without flinching from the mission earns a credibility that no speechwriter can manufacture.
Iran's regime claimed it was only targeting US military bases and assets. US Central Command called that a "lie." The Revolutionary Guards claimed to have targeted a US aircraft carrier. Central Command said that was false.
Meanwhile, Iran reportedly struck Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on Monday morning. These are not American military installations. They are sovereign nations. Whatever narrative Tehran is trying to construct about a disciplined, proportional response collapses the moment it starts lobbing missiles at Gulf states.
The Iranian regime says more than 200 people have been killed since the strikes began. That figure comes without independent verification, but even on its own terms, it underscores the scale of what has unfolded. This is not a pinprick operation. It is a campaign designed to end a nuclear threat permanently.
In his address, Trump issued another ultimatum to what remains of Iran's military apparatus:
These intolerable threats will not continue any longer. I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military police, to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.
He appealed directly to the Iranian people: "Be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country."
Trump also placed the campaign in a broader historical frame:
This is the duty and the burden of a free people. These actions are right and they are necessary to ensure that Americans will never have to face a radical, bloodthirsty terrorist regime armed with nuclear weapons.
For decades, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment treated Iran's nuclear ambitions as a problem to be managed. Managed through agreements that the regime violated. Managed through sanctions, the regime circumvented. Managed through diplomatic frameworks that bought Tehran time while it enriched uranium and exported terror through Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Management is over.
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center who formerly taught at the Air Command and Staff College, raised a practical concern about weapons stockpiles to the Wall Street Journal. "One of the challenges is you can deplete these really quickly," she said. "We're using them faster than we can replace them."
That is worth noting, not as an argument against the campaign, but as a reminder that industrial capacity is a strategic asset. Wars are won by nations that can sustain what they start. The defense industrial base has atrophied under decades of peacetime procurement habits and budget fights. If this campaign exposes that gap, it should accelerate the push to rebuild domestic production, not slow the mission.
Trump said he spoke Sunday with leaders of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, and "a couple of others." His summary of those conversations was characteristically direct: "they're fighting, they're fighting too."
The Gulf states are not spectators. Iran just struck three of them. Whatever diplomatic caution defined the region's posture before this week, the calculus has shifted. When a regime under siege starts hitting its neighbors, those neighbors stop hedging.
Trump said of what comes next: "It'll be very interesting to watch, but a lot of things could happen and a lot of very positive things could happen."
For forty-five years, the Islamic Republic operated on the assumption that it could sponsor terror, pursue nuclear weapons, and threaten American lives without facing an existential consequence. Saturday night, that assumption died in the capital city of Tehran.