Trump Calls Iran’s 47-Year History of Violence a Justification for Ongoing Bombing Campaign

Drawing a direct historical line between Iran’s past conduct and the current military campaign, Donald Trump argued on social media Friday that Iranian leaders had been killing innocent people around the world for 47 years and that, as the 47th president, he was now killing them. The message, which called the Iranian leadership “deranged scumbags,” was posted as American and Israeli aircraft continued their bombing campaign over Tehran. Trump vowed that Iran would be struck “very hard” in the coming days.
The conflict’s origins lie in Israel’s strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for nearly four decades. The killing unleashed a chain of retaliations and counter-strikes that has now drawn the entire Middle East into its orbit. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards issued statements on Friday announcing new waves of missile and drone attacks on Israel, framing the operation as part of the annual al-Quds Day demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed at a press conference that more than 15,000 enemy targets had been struck since the war began. He described Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei as wounded, disfigured, and in hiding, dismissing his recent written statement as weak and unconvincing. Israel’s military announced it had struck more than 200 individual targets in the previous 24 hours, including missile launch pads, weapons production facilities, and Iranian air defence systems.
The human cost is staggering across every nation drawn into the conflict. Iran has reported more than 1,300 deaths. Lebanon has recorded over 600 killed and 800,000 displaced. Israel reports 12 deaths, while the United States has lost 13 service members, including six killed when a refuelling aircraft crashed in Iraq. A French soldier was also killed in Iraq by a pro-Iranian militia drone strike, underscoring how widely the conflict has now spread.
Iran’s economic warfare through attacks on the Gulf and its effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz added a global dimension to the crisis. Saudi Arabia intercepted nearly 50 Iranian drones. Debris damaged a building at Dubai’s International Financial Centre. Two people died in Oman when drones crashed near Sohar. With oil markets reacting to the disruption of a waterway carrying one-fifth of the world’s energy supplies, and European governments scrambling to negotiate safe passage diplomatically, the war’s consequences were being felt in capitals far removed from the Middle East.