The President of the United States, Donald Trump, assured this Monday that the operation against Iran will last as long as necessary and suggested it could extend beyond five weeks. "Whatever the time, it's fine, whatever is necessary (...) we projected between four and five weeks, but we have the capacity to go much further than that," he said during an event at the White House. The scope and duration of the so-called 'Epic Fury' operation launched on Saturday against Iran are uncertain after Israel and the United States managed to assassinate the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in power since 1989. Trump said at the event that "the objectives are clear": to dismantle Iran's ballistic missile program, destroy the Iranian Navy, and prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In a previous press conference, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated that this "is not a regime change war," although he emphasized that a "change in the regime" has been achieved in Iran. The head of the Pentagon, who refused to provide a timeline for the next steps of the operation, assured that it has nothing to do with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a conflict heavily criticized by Trump, as it will not be "endless." Meanwhile, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, stated that military operations against Iran are in their initial phase and "will take some time" to achieve the objectives, ruling out the possibility of an imminent end to the intervention. He also acknowledged that they will require "hard work" and could cause new casualties among his troops, following the death of four U.S. soldiers in Kuwait after a retaliatory Iranian attack. The possibility of deploying troops on the ground and assuming the casualties that may occur in this intervention are some of the greatest risks Trump is taking, having committed during the campaign not to intervene in wars outside the United States. With a few months to go until the midterm elections on November 3, and considering the potential negative impact on the Republicans' chances according to recent polls, Trump stated that he "doesn't care about the polls" and that he is doing "the right thing" in Iran.
