President Donald Trump called the United States and Israel’s ongoing war with Iran a “tremendous success” that was “going to be finished pretty quickly,” in a marathon series of remarks to lawmakers and reporters on Monday.

He also downplayed the conflict by describing it as a “little excursion,” notably omitting the word “war” from his remarks despite having discussed it as such for more than a week.

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil,” Trump told Republican lawmakers assembled at his Doral, Florida, golf club. “And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”

The president had not, up until this point, shied away from branding the conflict a war — breaking with many of his allies on Capitol Hill, who throughout the last week and a half haveargued to reportersthat America is not at war with Iran.

Trump declined to give a precise timeline for the conflict’s resolution, telling reporters that it would not end this week and that “we’re ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.”

“We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective, and some people could say they’re pretty well complete,” Trump said.

“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he continued. “We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger, once and for all.”

The president and his allies have offeredcontradictory explanationsfor the war’s genesis. On Monday, Trump said the Iranians were “100%” ready to attack the United States, Israel and “all of the Middle East,” adding that “if they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it on Israel, and this was going to be a major attack.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, however,saidlast week that U.S. forces “have only just begun to fight.”

Asked to reconcile the secretary’s comments with his estimation that the conflict would be over soon, Trump told reporters: “Well, I think you could say both. It’s the beginning of building a new country.”

Source: Drudge Report