US President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington could rapidly destroy Iranian infrastructure, while insisting he had not underestimated Tehran's resilience in the war.
"I didn't underestimate anything. We hit them unbelievably hard," Trump said in an interview with Fox News after he visited China.
He added that the US "left their bridges, we left their electricity capacity. We can knock that all out in two days. Everything."
Trump described repeated breakdowns in diplomacy with Iran, saying negotiations had become unreliable and unpredictable.
"They were going to give us the dust, everything we wanted, and every time they make a deal, they -- the next day it's like we didn't have that conversation, and that's taking place about five times, there's something wrong with them, actually they're crazy," he said.
Trump also framed a possible solution as a choice between escalation and restraint. "It's either going to be violent or not violent, and I far prefer not violent," he said.
When asked about the midterm elections in the US in November, Trump said, "I'm not going to let the election determine what's going to happen with respect to Iran," reiterating his position that Tehran cannot have a nuclear program.
