US President Donald Trump announced, in statements from the Beştepe presidential complex in Ankara following the NATO summit, that the United States “struck Iran hard last night” and that the truce between the two countries “has ended.”

Trump said: “We did what should have been done in Iran 47 years ago. In a historic effort, we destroyed Iran’s military capacity within a few weeks, destroyed the runways at its airports, its leaders were removed, and its missile launch pads were destroyed.” Very few and most of them were destroyed.”

The American President added that his country has “by a clear margin the strongest army in the world,” noting that NATO countries have now “respected” the United States after they were “ridiculing it two years ago.”

In the context of the NATO summit, Trump thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, describing him as “running a very successful and militarily strong country,” and he praised the new Ankara airport, which was well received. In it, he stressed that Turkey “will obtain F-35 fighters.”

Trump also thanked NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and called on all member states to accelerate their plans to reach the goal of spending 5% of GDP on defense, stressing that NATO countries increased their defense spending by about $150 billion in 2025, most of which is on American-made equipment.

Trump’s statements come amid an accelerating military escalation.In the Gulf, after Iran announced the killing of 8 members of its army in American strikes targeting the south of the country, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard responded by targeting military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.