US President Donald Trump on Sunday, 7 June defended American military strikes against Iran, pushing back firmly against suggestions that the operation contradicted his long-standing pledge to keep the United States out of new wars. Speaking in an exclusive interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Trump framed the action as a necessary measure to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — and insisted it would not become another protracted Middle East conflict.

Trump's Defence of the Strikes

When asked directly whether the military campaign broke a campaign promise he had repeated since 2015, Trump was unequivocal. 'No. No,' he replied. 'I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country from having a nuclear weapon because they'd use it,' he said. 'I'm doing our country a service. It's America first.'

Trump also disputed the premise of the question, clarifying his earlier position. 'First of all, I didn't guarantee no war,' he said. 'I don't like these endless wars. This is not an endless war.'

The Decision to Act

Trump described a high-stakes internal deliberation before authorising the strikes. 'At the hottest point in the history of our country, I took Scott Howard, I took Pete, I took everybody into a room. I said, I have to do this country, this world, the Middle East, Israel, everybody a favour. You have Iran. They're going to have a nuclear weapon,' he said.

He added that he had previously terminated the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran before ordering the military action. 'I terminated the deal,' Trump said. 'Then I sent the B-2 bombers in about nine, 10 months ago. And they obliterated, totally obliterated the site.'

Claims of Decisive Military Success

Trump made sweeping claims about the scale of American military achievements, asserting that the operation had fundamentally degraded Iran's capabilities. 'We took over Venezuela in a matter of minutes. We destroyed the capability of Iran in a matter of days. Nobody's ever seen anything like it,' he said.

He further stated: 'It's not a quagmire. I just wiped out the military of a very dangerous country and I wiped out the nuclear threat.' These claims have not been independently verified, and analysts caution that assessments of Iran's residual military and nuclear capacity remain contested.

Diplomacy Still on the Table — With a Warning

Despite the military action, Trump indicated that a negotiated settlement remained possible, though he paired the offer with a stark threat. 'I'm gonna do it either through negotiation where we're very close to a deal, or I'm gonna blow the hell out of them, to be honest with you,' he said. He added that the United States was 'almost finished' and anticipated either a deal or a definitive resolution. 'They cannot have a nuclear weapon,' he reiterated.

Decades of US-Iran Nuclear Tensions

The dispute over Iran's nuclear programme has been a defining issue in American foreign policy for more than two decades. Successive administrations — from George W. Bush through Barack Obama and Joe Biden — sought to contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions through a combination of sanctions, multilateral diplomacy, and international monitoring under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump's first term saw him exit the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reimposing sweeping sanctions. The latest military escalation marks a significant departure from the diplomatic track that had, until recently, remained nominally active.

With Trump signalling that the United States is close to either a deal or further strikes, the next few weeks will be critical in determining the shape of the post-conflict order in the Middle East.