President Donald Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting that Iran was “about to surrender.” But less than 24 hours later, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, made his first public statement vowing to keep fighting. The two contrasting messages highlight a clear gap between Trump’s private assessments and what is actually happening on the ground.
According to Axios, during the G7 call, Trump told allied leaders, “I got rid of a cancer that was threatening us all,” according to officials briefed on the conversation. He also suggested there were no officials left alive in Tehran with the power to announce a surrender, saying, “Nobody knows who is the leader, so there is no one that can announce surrender.”
