President Donald Trump has acknowledged the possibility that Iran could carry out retaliatory attacks on American soil following the massive U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as "Hvylya" reports, citing Trump's interview with TIME magazine.
Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliation at home, Trump did not dismiss the threat. "I guess," he said. "But I think they're worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."
Iran has already retaliated with missile and drone bombardments against U.S. bases and allied territory in the region, targeting military facilities across the Gulf, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. One Iranian drone killed six American service members at a U.S. command center in Kuwait - the first American combat fatalities of Operation Epic Fury.
Trump framed the military campaign as a preventative action. "America First is really about keeping America healthy and well, and not having other countries, you know, hit us," he told TIME. "There are occasions when you have no choice. This was an occasion." He said the aim is to prevent Iran from having the capacity to endanger the United States.
Senior administration officials had told reporters that one of the triggers for the strike was an intelligence assessment indicating Iran was preparing ballistic-missile attacks that could be used "potentially pre-emptively" against American forces in the region. "The President decided he was not going to sit back and allow American forces in the Middle East to absorb attacks from conventional missiles," one official said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that Washington moved first because "if we didn't pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."
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