US President Donald Trump said the United States may begin striking Iran’s power plants and bridges due to the Islamic regime “tapping the United States along” in talks, according to an interview with Fox News’s Trey Yingst on Wednesday.
“I may keep going,” Trump told Fox. “They had a chance to sign a deal and survive.”
He added that little progress has been made in negotiations between the two countries.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump implied that he would take action against Iran for taking too long on a peace deal.
“The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post. “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Tuesday that the US launched strikes against Iran in response to the downing of a US Army Apache helicopter, targeting Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz.
CENTCOM described the strikes as “self-defense” and “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”
The downed Apache pilots were rescued by a US military unmanned vehicle, with Trump describing the operation as a “miracle.”
Trump told Fox that an Iranian drone had hit the low-flying helicopter without exploding, with the pilots managing to safely bring the aircraft down while the drone was still lodged inside the fuselage.
“It was on fire, it was hot,” Trump said of the conditions the pilots faced during the incident.
Trump added that the US destroyed over half of what Iran has attempted to reconstitute amid the ceasefire.
Iran’s military spokesperson, Abolfazl Shekarchi, responded to Trump’s statements later on Wednesday, telling Iranian state media that the country has “proven that we will respond to threats accordingly.”
Danya Saperstein, Goldie Katz, and Reuters contributed to this report.