Middle East & North Africa
Trump at Arlington: “We won” in Iran, and calls for “total victory”
In his Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, Donald Trump said the U.S. has already beaten Iran and that only the timing of ending the conflict remains open, adding: “We want total victory, not 93%.”
Donald Trump turned his Veterans Day speech into a defence of his administration’s two wars. Speaking from the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, at the 73rd national observance on Wednesday, November 11, the American president said the U.S. has already defeated Iran and that only the question of when to end the conflict remains open. The speech is available in a White House video.
The occasion for the turn to Iran was Marine veteran Dale Garner, the only survivor of those beside him in the October 23, 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which cost 241 Americans their lives. “America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war on America since 1979,” Trump said. “We won. It is just a matter of when we want to end it. We want total victory, not 93% victory,” he added, estimating that Tehran will need 25 years to rebuild what was destroyed and that “we hope we do not have to destroy any more” of the country.
The president recalled that B-2 bombers prevented Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and that operations began seven months ago, with only a few weeks of hard fighting. “We lost 18 wonderful souls,” he said, adding that when the conflict ends, “and it will end soon”, the world will be safer. To stress the difference, he cited the losses of earlier wars: 36,500 dead in four years in Korea, 60,000 in Vietnam, more than 4,400 in Iraq and 2,500 in Afghanistan over almost 20 years, wars from which, he said, the U.S. “gained very little”. A few days earlier he had called a new strike on Iran “highly unlikely” if Tehran signs a deal.
On Venezuela he was more absolute. “We won the war in 48 minutes,” he said, and claimed that the country’s oil revenue has already covered the cost of the operation many times over. He also said China and Russia left Venezuela when asked, and that recruitment to the U.S. armed forces is at a historic high, with waiting lists.
The official White House line, and an unexpected episode
The White House’s official release on the ceremony focuses on the veterans the president honoured: 103-year-old Jack Myers, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and was among the first to liberate the Dachau camp, Colonel Douglas Moore, a medevac helicopter pilot in Vietnam with 1,874 missions, and Green Beret Master Sergeant Ryan Hendrickson, who returned to Afghanistan 18 months after being gravely wounded. Trump, who spoke after Vice President JD Vance, also announced a large triumphal arch for veterans.
The day also had an unexpected episode. After the ceremony, the guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier publicly rebuked the entourage of War Secretary Pete Hegseth when loud laughter was heard as the group was photographed on the steps in front of the monument. In the video the soldier can be heard shouting that “all visitors must maintain silence and respect at all times”. Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldier “correctly and respectfully” reminded everyone to observe decorum. The episode came a day after Hegseth escaped impeachment in the House of Representatives, after his counter-attack against Thomas Massie.
