President Donald Trump explicitly linked the ongoing fight against Iran to America’s post-9/11 fight against terrorism Friday, declaring on the 25th anniversary of the attacks that “there can only be victory.”
Marking a quarter-century since nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on September 11, 2001, Trump renewed the vow made in the attacks’ aftermath.
“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget,” Trump told a remembrance ceremony at the Pentagon. “That’s why we fight today.”
“We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory,” he continued. “We fight hard. We fight to win.”
Trump went on to salute the generation of U.S. troops who fought in the War on Terror before turning to those now confronting Iran.
“For 25 years, our best and bravest have kept America safe,” Trump said, honoring “every member of the United States military who served in the War on Terror.”
“It is a war on sick, horrible terror.”
Trump then saluted “the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”
War Secretary Pete Hegseth made the connection even more explicit, declaring that “the struggle against evil continues, and it continues now.”
“Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said, describing Iran as an Islamic theocracy that “has wished us death for nearly half a century” and sponsored attacks that killed Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“But they did not factor in this president.”
Hegseth pointed to the damage inflicted on Iran since the campaign began.
“The United States has killed their leaders, destroyed their air force, and their navy rests at the bottom of the sea,” he said. “Their defenses are gone.”
He then turned to the continuing military and economic pressure on Tehran.
“We’re still sending terrorists where they belong — to hell — and tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong,” Hegseth said, adding that the United States is ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.
“The economic pressure tightens every day. We control the Strait,” he declared. “We will finish this fight.”
The warning followed a week in which U.S. forces destroyed eight Iranian crude carriers in retaliation for repeated Iranian ballistic missile attacks targeting American warships. U.S. Central Command says the tankers were part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network financing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its terrorist proxies.
Trump’s remarks came a day after he said he had no regrets about confronting Iran, again identifying Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as the overriding reason for doing so.
Asked during a Fox News interview Thursday whether he would make the same decision again, Trump answered unequivocally.
“If I had it to do again, I’d do exactly as I did,” he responded. “I took out their nuclear capability.”
Trump argued that an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten Israel, the wider Middle East, and ultimately the United States, warning that Tehran “would’ve started hitting a couple of our cities.”
“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he stressed. “And if I didn’t do what I did, they would have a nuclear weapon.”
The anniversary brought another Iran terrorism connection Friday when the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program highlighted three senior al-Qaeda figures it says are based in Iran.
“These individuals are senior leaders within al-Qaida, which utilizes Iran as a safe haven to execute violent attacks against the United States and its allies,” the program stated of Sayf al-Adl, Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, and Yasin al-Suri.
The United States is offering up to $10 million for information on al-Adl, whom it identifies as a senior al-Qaeda leader implicated in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Trump ultimately returned to the American response to the attacks, saying 9/11 revealed “what a country is truly made of.”
“No one can ever prepare for a day like 9/11, but we can always choose to be the kind of nation the world saw in those days after,” he said, describing American heroes as those who “race into buildings and give their lives on a Tuesday morning for strangers they’ve never met.”
“September 11th reminded us of the terrible power of hate,” Trump concluded. “The 25 years since have shown us the even greater power of the American spirit to endure and prevail and to win.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.