'Iran war to end soon,' says Donald Trump, warns Tehran not to try 'anything cute'

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that the Iran war was going to "end soon", without providing any specific timeline. He also warned Tehran that if they tried "anything cute", the US would end the nation. He called the Iran war a "short term excursion."

"It's going to be ended soon, and if it starts up again they'll be hit even harder," Trump told a news conference in Florida. "We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some people. And I think you'll see it's going to be a short-term excursion," he said.





Earlier, during a CBS interview, he said that the war was "very complete" and warned Iran against doing "anything cute".

"They've shot everything they have to shoot, and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country," the US president said during a CBS interview. "If they do anything bad, that would be the end of Iran and you'd never hear the name again," he added.

"I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they've got no air force," he had said.

Though he declared that US and allies had won, he added that it was not enough and would go "forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory".

"We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all...The United States of America is the greatest and most exceptional nation in human history and will not be threatened by evil terrorists and lunatics any longer," he said.

He further said that if US and Israel did not attack Iran, Tehran would have initiated the attack.

"If we didn't go in, they would have come in after us...Within a week, they were going to attack us 100 per cent. They were ready. They had all these missiles far more than anyone thought and they were going to attack us. They were going to attack all of the Middle East and Israel. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it on Israel. This was going to be a major attack. They had all of those missile sites and all those launchers that we got rid of about 80 per cent of them right now...They have very few launchers left. What our military has done is amazing," he said.

The US leader has offered similar assessments in recent days about the damage caused by the US-Israeli strikes that began on February 28, though he had not previously gone so far as to suggest the war might be nearing an end.

As recently as last Friday, Trump said Iran’s "unconditional surrender" was the only acceptable outcome for ending the conflict.

His latest remarks also came about an hour after the Pentagon wrote on social media that the United States had "only just begun to fight."