February 28, 2026 | 03:39 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - US President Donald Trump announced that the US has begun launching a "major combat operation" in Iran on Saturday morning.
He claimed that the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran on Saturday, February 28, 2026, aimed at "eliminating the imminent threats from the Iranian regime."
“Short time ago, US military began major combat operation in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime,” he said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
In an eight-minute Truth Social video as reported by CBS News, Trump said the US is "undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests."
The President stated that the US will "destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry," "annihilate their Navy," and "ensure that the region’s ‘terrorist’ proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world."
He said the US has "sought, repeatedly, to make a deal" to curb Iran's nuclear program, but accused Iran of rejecting " every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions."
"This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces," Trump said.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump received a briefing on various military options against Iran from Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM).
Citing internal sources at the White House, ABC News as quoted by Antara on Thursday mentioned that General Dan Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president's top military advisor, also attended the meeting.
The directive was given amid the third round of indirect talks between the US and Iran delegations in Geneva, Switzerland, addressing Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Following the talks, Omani Foreign Minister (FM) Badr al-Busaidi, acting as a mediator, reported "significant progress" in the negotiations.
Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi stated that both sides showed seriousness and were getting closer to an agreement on specific issues.
Israel's Pressure
Mehran Kamrava, the director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said that although he did not think the US would attack Iran, Israel has been "quite vocal about its intentions to sabotage US-Iran negotiations."
"As it did last June, it appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations between Iran and the US,” Kamrava told Al Jazeera.
“I think [US President] Donald Trump had pushed himself into a corner from which he couldn’t back out. The so-called armada, the massive military build – up, the constant green lights to Israel over the last year and a half, and so I think in many ways, yet again, what we see is the Israelis forced Donald Trump’s hand and he couldn’t really say no to them at this juncture,” Kamrava said.
Read: Breaking News: Israel Launches Attack on Iran
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