The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated this Tuesday that the bombings carried out in the last hours against the Iranian island of Qeshm constituted "a small attack, not a war" and specified that the target was anti-aircraft defense systems installed in the area, with no official data so far on possible victims.
"It was a small attack, not a war," the American leader reiterated in an interview granted to the Fox News network, where he emphasized that the United States Army had been watching the construction of these alleged defensive systems for some time before proceeding to their destruction.
"We saw them build them and once they finished, we attacked them," he added, then stressing that the option of launching a large-scale offensive against Iran remains open if no progress is made toward a peace agreement. "We will see. I am not looking to kill a lot of people. If it has to be done, it will have to be done, but I do not want to do it," he stated.
In his statements, Trump compared the current situation with Iran to the operation carried out in January against Venezuela, which left more than one hundred dead and resulted in the capture of the country's president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. "Look at Venezuela. In 48 minutes, the war was over. A very powerful force was defeated almost immediately," he recounted, before insisting that "Iran could be the same, but better."
The president likewise stated that Tehran was "two weeks away" from obtaining nuclear weapons, a claim that both Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reject, and he emphasized that Iranian forces would have suffered severe damage as a result of the offensive launched by the United States and Israel against the Asian country at the end of February.
"All their ships are at the bottom of the sea. They had 288 planes, all are in pieces on the runways. They have no planes," Trump asserted, despite Iranian authorities denying that destruction of their military capabilities and having responded to the attacks by the United States in recent months with the launch of missiles and drones against American interests in the Middle East region.