U.S. President Donald Trump announced the beginning of the U.S. military campaign against Iran, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” by the Pentagon, in an 8-minute video posted at 2:30 AM Eastern Time. In it, Trump accused Iran of being “the world’s number-one state sponsor of terror,” that had “just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.” He claimed that Iran “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
Therefore, “the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy. We’re going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans.”
