Trump says Iran war will end in 'very near future'

HAMILTON, Canada

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Iran war would be ending in the "very near future," but insisted "we're not ready to leave yet."

"Look, if we left right now, it would take 10 years for them to rebuild," Trump said at a meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin at the White House. "We'll be leaving in pretty much the very near future."

Claiming that the US "decimated" Iran "from every standpoint," he said, "Everything is gone. Their leaders are gone."

On the Israeli killing of Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in an airstrike near Tehran, Trump confirmed that he was "killed yesterday." He said Larijani was "responsible for the killing of 32,000 people" at protests in Iran.

He added that "Iran is just a military operation to me … We could take out their electric capacity in one hour."

Criticizing NATO allies, he said, "We helped with Ukraine, and they don't help with Iran, and they all acknowledge that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon."

He then called Iran's leadership "the worst people" and compared them to Adolf Hitler.

In later remarks at an event with Friends of Ireland, Trump reiterated the severe damage the US had inflicted on Iran. "We have to make it a little bit more permanent, because no other president has to go through this."

"We shouldn't have any other president having to go through this kind of thing," he added.