Iran war news: Donald Trump says the US should not have been ‘pushed around’ by Iran

Donald Trump says the US will no longer be bullied by it’s enemies as he provided a chilling update about the war and Iran’s quest to arm itself with a nuclear weapon.

As battles rage throughout the Middle East, with Israel engaged in cross-border strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon and American strike forces running hundreds of raids from the air and sea against Iran, the US president says the military action against the pariah country is well ahead of schedule.

“On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it about a 15,” Mr Trump said at a forum in Washington on Wednesday.

“We have the greatest military in the world by far, and if we hadn’t have done it first they (Iran) would have done it to Israel.”

Iran leadership all wind up dead

America has drawn a line in the sand as they continue to “wipe out” resistance from Iran and their sympathisers throughout the Middle East, according to the president.

Mr Trump says the the US will not be “pushed around” any longer and they are in a “very strong position now” in the war against Iran.

“It (Iran) is a nation that is out of control and they would have used it (nuclear program) on us if we waited any longer,” Mr Trump said.

“Their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they wind up dead.

“It’s an amazing thing that’s taking place before your eyes, because for 47 years we were pushed around and we shouldn’t have been.

“You see it as well as I do the tremendous progress that’s being made.

“Their missiles are being wiped out rapidly, their launchers are being wiped out and their attacking their neighbours.”

The Obama deal

Mr Trump was scathing about Barack Obama’s relationship with the rulers of Iran during his term as president and mocked his policies implying they only moved the rogue state closer to its goals.

“For 47 years they have been killing our people and killing people from all over the world,” Mr Trump said.

“If we didn’t terminate one of the worst deals ever made, the Obama nuclear deal, I call it the Obama nuclear deal, where he gave everything to Iran including a nuclear weapon, it was a road to a nuclear weapon, bad things would have happened four years ago.

“They would have a had a weapon four years ago if I didn’t terminate that deal.

“A big factor was the killing of Soleimani in my first term and maybe the biggest factor was the rebuilding of the military in my first term and the B-52’s obliteration of the nuclear program.

“Within two weeks they would have had a nuclear weapon if we didn’t do the B-52 attack.”

Submarine sinks Iranian warship

Meanwhile, a US submarine has sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening the US military’s pursuit of the Iranian navy.

Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister identified the warship as the frigate IRIS Dena and said it was heading back to Iran from an eastern Indian port, AAP reports.

The attack happened in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of kilometres from the Gulf where US and Israeli forces are striking Iran and it is retaliating with missile and drone attacks.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon.

“Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.”

Hospital authorities in the Sri Lankan port city of Galle said 87 bodies were brought in by military rescuers who responded to an early morning distress call.

Another 32 were rescued and were being treated at hospital and about 60 people were likely unaccounted for from an estimated 180 people on board, Sri Lankan authorities said.