President-elect Donald Trump refused to say Monday whether he would support the US or Israel launching preemptive airstrikes on Iran to stop it from successfully building a nuclear weapon, following reports that he was mulling the move.
“Am I going to do preemptive strikes on Iran? Is that a serious question? How could I answer a question like that?” Trump, 78, told a reporter at his lengthy Mar-a-Lago press conference.
A second reporter at the Palm Beach, Fla., resort question-and-answer session then asked the incoming president if he would support Israel launching a preemptive strike.
“How could I tell you a thing like that now?” Trump shot back.
“You don’t talk about that before something may or may not happen. I don’t want to insult you, it’s just not something that I would ever answer having to do with there or any other place in the world,” he said.
The soon-to-be 47th president has recently expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear capabilities to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in phone conversations, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tehran has long denied that its producing nuclear weapons — despite reports in recent years that the nation is working to enrich its uranium supply to weapons-grade level.
Trump has also previously expressed great concern about the Iranians targeting him in an assassination attempt and told Time magazine in his 2024 “Person of the Year” interview last week that “anything can happen” when asked if he would go to war with Iran in his upcoming term.
The once and future president and his advisers have been deliberating about the best way to move forward with Iran, and have two main strategies that either include more military pressure by stationing more troops in the Middle East or giving more weapons to Israel, the Journal noted in its report.
In addition to the threat of a direct military attack, the Iranian regime could be slapped with economic sanctions.
Trump has insisted that he will end the Israel-Hamas war when he comes back into office and that it will be easier to achieve peace in the Middle East than in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
“We had a very good talk. We discussed what is going to happen, and I’ll be very available on January 20,” Trump told reporters about his recent discussions with Netanyahu on the conflict.
