Trump contradicts earlier Iran military claims, saying U.S. “left their military alone”

President Donald Trump has made a stunning new claim about Iran, telling Fox News on Saturday that “we’ve actually left their military alone” after repeatedly claiming the US had completely destroyed Iran’s military forces. “Their Navy is totally gone, 100%,” Trump told his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump on her show, “My View.” “Their Air Force is totally gone, 100%. Their military, we’ve sort of left it alone — because we think that their military is somewhat moderate. They have other people that aren’t moderate. We’ve taken them out. We’ve taking different forms of leadership out.” “We’ve actually left their military alone,” he continued. “People would be surprised to hear that. Because mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a country that for 40 years can never rebuild.” Trump’s remarks came after he boasted on multiple occasions in Truth Social posts that Iran had been “totally defeated” by the US and is “no longer the‘Bully of the Middle East.’”“We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise,” Trump wrote in a separate Truth Social post in March before specifically claiming that Iran’s Navy, Air Force and air defences had been annihilated.   “Their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth,” he continued. “We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time.”The president made another stunning claim during his Fox News interview, admitting to Lara Trump: “We shouldn’t have been in Iran.”“Look at what happened with Iraq,” he said. “We did so bad, that was such a foolish thing, what we did. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place, by the way.”“And we shouldn’t have been in Iran. But Iran has the capability — if we didn’t hit them with the B-2 bombers nine months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon right now, and it would be a whole different story,” Trump continued.Noting that “there’s no deal that’s good enough,” on Friday, Trump reportedly sent back changes to the proposed deal with Iran after a meeting with advisers, officials said, subsequently continuing on the seesaw of negotiations into another week. Watch Trump’s Fox News appearance below. Skip to the 2:24 mark to hear his comments on Iran. 

The president's confounding statement seems to contradict several prior comments in which he claimed the U.S. "completely destroyed" Iran's military. The post Trump Makes Puzzling Claim On Iran — Now Says ‘We’ve Actually Left Their Military Alone’ After Previously Saying US ‘Completely Destroyed’ it first appeared on Mediaite.