Trump claims US yet to launch largest wave of strikes on Iran: ‘The big one is coming soon’

US President Donald Trump claims the largest wave of strikes in Iran is still to come.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” Trump tells CNN.

Asked for a timeline for Operation Epic Fury, Trump says, “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”

Yesterday, he claimed he always thought it would take four to five weeks.

Trump says the US is taking steps outside the military realm for the Iranian people, without elaborating.

He acknowledges that the “biggest surprise” of the conflict thus far has been Iran’s attacks on its Arab neighbors.

“We told [the Arab states hit], ‘We’ve got this,’ and now they want to fight. And they’re aggressively fighting. They were going to be very little involved and now they insist on being involved,” Trump claims.

According to Trump, Khamenei was meeting with his inner circle for breakfast when the strikes hit his Tehran compound, having believed they were safe from a daylight attack. Despite Trump’s claim, the attack occurred during daytime over Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally fast.

“It was 49 leaders that were taken out. That was going to take four weeks, we thought, to get rid of the Iranian leadership. And it’s always, you know, if they hide, it’s a lot longer than four weeks. And they would have been hiding,” Trump tells Fox News. “We were shocked when we heard what was going on. We knew exactly what was happening and where.”

On who the new leader of Iran might be, Trump says he doesn’t know. “Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“They don’t know who’s leading. It’s a little like the unemployment line,” Trump asserts.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Khamenei put in place detailed plans for his succession and emergency chains of command should he, or other top leaders, be killed in potential US or Israeli strikes, elevating longtime loyalist Ali Larijani to manage the crisis.