President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated his threat to “finish the job” in Iran and said the current ceasefire is “over” while denying that renewed U.S. strikes in the country mark a return to war. 

Trump told reporters during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that he was no longer sure if he was interested in a peace deal with Iran and was questioning if the country’s leadership was rational enough to work with. 

Hours after Trump’s remarks, CENTCOM announced additional strikes on Iranian targets “at the direction of” the president, saying in a statement that the operation was intended to “further degrade [Iran’s] ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.” 

Asked during the press conference what caused him to sour on Iran’s leadership — whom he referred to on Wednesday as “scum” and “sick people,” after praising them last month as “very rational” and “nice to deal with” — Trump replied: “I got to know them.”

Trump noted that he was comparing the current regime to the previous two regimes in his prior complimentary statements.“I think they’re much more rational than level one, level two. Level one is gone, level two is gone. This is level three,” Trump said. “I think they are more rational, but based on their actions over the last week or two, they’re not doing a service to the people.”

“I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them,” he continued. “We can play games, but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.”

The comments came hours after the president said that the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran was “over” and said “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.” 

Trump went on to criticize Iran’s leaders as “a little loco. They’re a little crazy,” pointing to Iran’s continued attacks against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and claiming he’s Iran’s top target for assassination.

“They want to make a deal, but they don’t know how to make the deal, and then they go around shooting ships at night [in the Strait of Hormuz]. I don’t like that,” he said. “I’m the No. 1 target. … I’m the No. 1, because they’re scum. That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years.”

Still, he rejected the idea that the military operations meant that the U.S. was resuming full-scale warfare with Iran. 

“I don’t think ​it’s going to start again. I ​think it’s going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships, ​and so we hit them ​much harder,” Trump said of the war. “When they hit, we hit. We use their language. We speak their language. No, I don’t think so. I think anything that happens is going to be over very quickly and will only make [the region] safer.”

A former top Obama administration foreign policy official said on Wednesday that any Democratic lawmakers who vote to support U.S. strikes on Iran should be primaried. 

“If you vote for the funding of this war, you should be primaried. I don’t want you in the Democratic Party,” said Ben Rhodes, co-host of the “Pod Save the World” podcast and former deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama.

He was referring to Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Jared Golden (D-ME) and Juan Vargas (D-CA), the only four Democrats to vote against a war powers resolution last week that sought an immediate end to the U.S. military campaign in Iran. 

Rhodes, who was one of the biggest boosters of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and a leading Israel critic on the left, said the Democratic Party should have a big tent — but that support for President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran falls outside of that tent. 

“I would like to have a big tent in this party. I think there should be people with different ideas of how to get health care, different ideas of taxation,” Rhodes said to co-host Tommy Vietor. “To me, this is not a left-center issue. This is a right and wrong issue. Morally, what do we stand for as Democrats?”

Rhodes suggested that Democrats who cast a vote in support of the war are doing so because of donor pressure.

“How is anybody going to trust you to fight for their health care if you’re too afraid to cast a vote, that someone might call you weak or some donor might call you and complain?” Rhodes asked. “If you as a Democrat can’t say that I am against a war and I’m not going to fund a war that is being launched by an authoritarian president, illegally, with no rational basis that is explained to the American people, that has already unleashed these consequences, if you can’t stand against that, you don’t stand for a f***ing thing.”

President Donald Trump said over the weekend that Iran’s new leadership has made overtures to restart diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. — which he plans to accept — after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country. 

Still, the president warned that strikes would continue until their objectives had been achieved. 

Trump made the comments while speaking to The Atlantic on Sunday morning, one of a series of interviews he gave after launching a joint military operation against Iran alongside Israel on Saturday. The president has been touting Operation Epic Fury to journalists as an immediate success, arguing that the removal of Khamenei and 47 others in senior Iranian leadership has provided a window for diplomacy as the U.S. military operation swiftly advances.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

The commander-in-chief declined to say when he plans to begin engaging with the Iranians, instead noting that most of the Iranians involved in past negotiations with the U.S. are now deceased.

“Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big — that was a big hit,” Trump said. “They should have done it sooner. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”

Asked if he was willing to extend the bombing campaign in order to support a popular uprising in Iran, should it unfold, the president was similarly coy, telling the outlet: “I have to look at the situation at the time it happens … You can’t give an answer to that question.”

In a video posted to his Truth Social platform on Sunday afternoon, however, Trump spoke directly to the protesters, calling upon “all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”

Further illuminating his thinking, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday shortly after the killing of Khamenei, “We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us … Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves. That process should soon be starting.” 

“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective” of world peace, he wrote.

In an interview on Saturday evening with CBS News’ Robert Costa, Trump said he believes that the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed Khamenei made diplomacy “much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously, because they are getting beat up badly.”

As for the military operation itself, Trump suggested in subsequent conversations on Sunday with The Daily Mail and The New York Times that the U.S. could be involved for another four to five weeks. 

“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so,” Trump told the U.K. tabloid. “It’s always been about a four week process so — as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks or less.”

He repeated the four to five week timeline in interviews with Axios’ Barak Ravid on Saturday and The New York Times on Sunday.

“I can go long and take over the whole thing,” Trump told Ravid by phone, “or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs].’”

Trump later predicted to Ravid that, “In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) echoed the president’s predictions, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump has “no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside Iran.”

“The president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that’s designed not only to continue to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile arsenal, many more missiles than the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability,” said Cotton, one of the president’s more hawkish GOP allies on Capitol Hill. 

“Now obviously one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down, and the president would never leave a pilot behind,” he continued. “So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any downed pilot. But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.”

In the aftermath of U.S. strikes in Venezuela and the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro, uncertainty remains over whether the South American country’s ties to key U.S. adversaries and hostile posture toward Israel will change under interim President Delcy Rodríguez. 

During his time in power, Maduro’s Venezuela had been deeply embedded in a broader network of U.S. adversaries, particularly Iran, Russia and China. 

Dana Stroul, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explained that Venezuela “is a key supplier of cheap oil to China and has provided fertile ground for Iran’s terrorist network abroad.”

“Venezuela under Maduro was firmly part of the anti-American bloc of countries seeking to upend the post-WWII order,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum. “Venezuela has particularly tight financial links with Iran and Hezbollah involving drugs and money laundering.”

The U.S. operation to oust Maduro was condemned by both China and Iran, who called it a violation of international law and demanded the illegitimate leader be freed. Experts have told Jewish Insider that the move potentially weakens Tehran’s hold in Latin America. 

“It’s no surprise that the key enablers of the Maduro regime have all rejected the U.S. actions in Venezuela,” said Stroul. “They are now faced with the challenge of filling the Western Hemisphere gap in their network of anti-U.S. stakeholders.” 

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said China and Iran will “miss having a Venezuelan partner to poke America in the eye from close range, launder their money, run their drugs and buy their weapons.”

Maduro also positioned himself as a consistent adversary of Israel, severing diplomatic relations in 2009 and repeatedly aligning Caracas with Palestinian causes and with Iran. After Venezuela’s disputed election in July 2024, Maduro accused “international Zionism” of orchestrating unrest in the country, claiming in a televised address that “all the communication power of Zionism, which controls all the social networks, the satellites and all the power, is behind this coup d’état.”

But despite Maduro’s capture and vows from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to return to the country and reject the authority of the interim president, the U.S. appears to be backing Rodríguez, who is closely aligned with Maduro and has shown a similar posture when it comes to Israel and U.S. adversaries, creating concerns over whether the direction of Venezuela’s foreign policy will change. 

Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the Trump administration’s apparent backing of Rodríguez is a “mistake” and that he doesn’t see “any reason to believe” she would depart from Maduro’s approach to U.S. adversaries. 

“I have concern that we still have most of the problematic elements of the regime in Venezuela remaining in place,” said Bowman. “[Rodríguez] has been part of a regime that has been hostile to the United States and cozy with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its terror proxies. If one were a betting person, you would say at a minimum that [Rodríguez] is going to continue to harbor those problematic views toward China, Russia and Iran, if not manifest them in policy.”

At a swearing-in ceremony on Monday, the new leader appeared to embrace the ambassadors of Iran, China and Russia. In an address to the nation on Sunday, Rodríguez claimed the U.S. operation to capture the illegitimate dictator had “Zionist undertones,” echoing the sentiments of her predecessor. 

“Rodríguez wasted little time before blaming Jews — or Zionists — for Maduro’s capture,” said David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A junior partner of Iran, China, and Russia’s axis of aggressors and host of the Hezbollah terrorist group, the regime of [former Venezuelan dictator Hugo] Chávez and Maduro will continue to be hostile to Israel and the West.”

Koplow said Venezuela’s tight bonds with Iran and Hezbollah create an “anti-Israel narrative that is wrapped up in any action regarding Venezuela.”

“The close U.S.-Israel relationship has created a decades-long anti-American and anti-Israel front that links opposition to one as part and parcel of opposition to the other in a larger anti-imperialist position that takes an anti-Western and anti-Zionist stance, and we are seeing that play out in the Venezuela situation as well,” said Koplow. 

Ruhe said Rodríguez’s claims were “sadly unsurprising,” and that “the Venezuelan government needs a perpetual enemy to justify its own rule.”

“The United States is the most obvious target, but leaders in Caracas scapegoat Jews and Israel, too,” said Ruhe, who added that the interim president’s initial statements “indicate key continuities with Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him.”

Bowman added that it is “not impossible” to change Rodríguez’s course of action away from Maduro’s past policy if it benefits her “personal political interests,” noting that it may take “an extraordinary set of incentives to get her to change course.” 

Lawmakers said on Monday that an additional round of U.S. strikes on Iran remains on the table if the regime makes strides in rebuilding its nuclear program or other malign activities, echoing recent warnings from President Donald Trump.

Trump also threatened last week that the U.S. would intervene to protect Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on nationwide demonstrations, as U.S. officials are watching closely while Tehran reportedly accelerates efforts to restore its ballistic missile capabilities — developments that could spark renewed conflict with Israel and potentially the United States.

Republican senators expressed confidence that the president would strike Iranian nuclear facilities a second time if the U.S. determined that Tehran was working to restore its nuclear program. 

“I think there’s a chance” Trump will strike Iran’s nuclear sites again, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider. “If they go forward again and start building up nuclear facilities, yeah, I think Trump’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI, “President Trump is demonstrating that we have the most outstanding military in the world. And if he believes we have to hit Iran again, I believe he will do that.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) agreed but dismissed the suggestion that Trump’s willingness to order the operation that deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last week signified that the president was looking to resume strikes against Iran. 

“I don’t think one’s related to the other,” Kennedy told JI. “I also think that if Iran starts back in terms of developing a nuclear weapon, or substantially tries to increase the number of missiles that they have, I think the president should hit them and I believe he will.”

Asked about Trump’s threat to intervene to prevent crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and rumors of a potential second round of Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) emphasized the threat of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.

“We should be considering what action may be appropriate if Iran progresses with its missile building and nuclear programs, which are obviously a pressing and dire threat to us and Israel,” Blumenthal said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a leading voice in the Senate for constraining presidential war powers, who is pushing to block further action in Venezuela, told JI that the U.S. should not be sending in its military in response to the protests, particularly without congressional debate and approval.

“This president should not willy-nilly use the press, use the military as his palace guard to go here, there and everywhere,” Kaine said. “Not Nigeria, not Iran, not Venezuela, not international waters, not Cuba, not Mexico, not Panama, not Greenland. It should be a debate with Congress.”

He added that a constituent, whose son is an Army Ranger, urged Kaine during the holidays to work to prevent unilateral military deployments by the administration. “And I am representing one of the most pro-military states in the country, and that’s what my state thinks,” Kaine explained.