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Trump says Iran war projected to last 4 to 5 weeks, could go ‘far longer’
United States President Donald Trump has said the plan for the Iran war initially “projected four to five weeks”, adding the US military has the “capability to go far longer than that”.
Speaking on Monday from the White House, Trump outlined his administration’s justification for going to war against Iran alongside Israel, saying that Iran posed “grave threats” to the US, even as he again claimed that US strikes on Iran in June of last year led to the “obliteration of Iran’s nuclear programme”.
Trump also said that Iran’s ballistic missile programme was “growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas”.
“The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” Trump said, repeating a claim his administration has repeatedly made in the run-up to Saturday’s attack, for which US government officials have not provided any evidence.
The statements were significant, with Trump appearing to pivot from claims that Iran posed an immediate threat to the US. Instead, he characterised the Iranian government as potentially posing a longer-term threat.
“The purpose of this fast-growing missile programme was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these – highly forbidden by us – nuclear weapons,” Trump said.
“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people,” Trump said.
“Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat,” Trump said.
Under both US domestic law and international law, attacks on a foreign country must be in response to an immediate threat. Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war, while the president can act unilaterally in response to an imminent threat.
Trump has released two video speeches since the US and Israel began their attacks, including saying in a recorded message released yesterday that Iran had waged a “war against civilisation”.
He also predicted there would likely be more US military personnel deaths after the Pentagon confirmed the first three members of the military killed in the Middle East on Sunday.
To date, at least 555 people have been killed in Iran, 13 have been killed in Lebanon, 10 killed in Israel, three killed in the United Arab Emirates, and two killed in Iraq, with Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait each reporting one death amid Iranian retaliations in the region.
On Monday, shortly after the Pentagon confirmed a fourth member of the US military had died, Trump did not give a clear timeline for the operations.
He said “Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”
Trump added that the military had originally projected four weeks to “terminate the military leadership” of Iran.
To date, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several other top officials, including the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have been confirmed killed in US-Israeli strikes.
“We’re ahead of schedule there by a lot,” Trump said.
Trump spoke shortly after Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth took questions from reporters for the first time since the attacks began.
Hegseth appeared to respond to concerns from Trump’s own “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement about entering into a prolonged war.
Trump had vowed to end US interventionism during his presidential campaign, promising to focus on domestic needs over adventurism abroad.
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” Hegseth said.
“This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes,” he said.
“Israel has clear missions as well, for which we are grateful, capable partners,” he said, without defining Israel’s mission.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long called for the toppling of Iran’s government
Hegseth further vowed to fight the war “all on our terms, with maximum authorities, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars”.
[Aljazeera]
Spain has started evacuating passengers from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship anchored near Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Health Minister Mónica García said the operation was “proceeding normally” and that all passengers on board the MS Hondius were still asymptomatic.
They will be divided into groups by nationality and ferried to the coast in small boats. Charter planes will be on the tarmac at the local airport, ready to repatriate them to their home countries.
Fourteen Spanish nationals will be the first to disembark, then those flown out by the Netherlands, including Dutch, Greek and German passengers, and part of the crew.
Other flights are poised to leave after that, including to the UK and US. The last evacuation flight is expected to leave on Monday to Australia.
With a long camera lens, passengers could be seen wandering around on the deck of the ship, or at the windows, all in white medical face masks, as the first evacuation took place.
Several sat socially distanced on the small evacuation boat, filming and taking photos as they approached land, where they were met by officials in white protective suits.
The Hondius pulled into the port of Granadilla before dawn on Sunday, a month after the first passenger died on board.
The sun then rose to reveal it anchored offshore, with military police boats on patrol and a major operation unfolding on land to help more than 100 passengers and crew disembark.
At about 07:00 (06:00 GMT) on Sunday, medical teams went on board to check everyone for signs of the virus.
There have been meticulous preparations to receive the ship, which won’t be permitted to reach shore: a security perimeter of one nautical mile was enforced around it as it approached the island.
Dozens of intensive care specialists are on stand-by at the Candelaria hospital in Tenerife in case anyone from the Hondius becomes seriously ill during the transfer. A strict isolation facility has one bed fully equipped to deal with infectious diseases, complete with testing kit and a ventilator.
“We are absolutely ready,” chief intensive care doctor Mar Martin told me on the unit, where large numbers of protective suits, masks and gloves are already piled up for staff.
“We’ve never seen [hantavirus] before – but it’s a virus, with some complications, just like we manage every day. We are fully trained for that.”
The complex operation to prevent the rare Andes strain of this virus spreading is described by Spain’s health minister as “unprecedented”.
On Saturday, she stressed that the risk of contagion for the general population was low. “We believe that alarmism, misinformation and confusion are contrary to the basic principles of preserving public health.”
Security measures in the port, an industrial facility in the south of Tenerife, increased notably on Saturday. Spain’s military police and disaster response teams have both set up large reception tents and access to the waterfront is restricted.
Spanish nationals leaving the ship will be flown to Madrid, where they face a mandatory quarantine in the Gomez Ulla military hospital. Complete isolation would be gruelling – the virus has an incubation period of up to nine weeks – and it is not clear how long people in Spain or elsewhere will be quarantined.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, now in Tenerife to oversee the disembarking, has praised the authorities for their “solid and effective response” to this outbreak.
It has been linked to a landfill site in the southernmost tip of Argentina, popular with birdwatchers. The virus is carried there by rodents, and it’s rare for it to pass between people, but three cruise passengers have died.
The WHO boss has urged nervous Spaniards to trust those in charge of the evacuation.
“Your concern is legitimate, because of the experience of Covid: that trauma is still in our minds,” he acknowledged. But he added that the risk of wider contagion now was low “because of how the virus works, and because of how the Spanish government has prepared to avoid any problem”.
There was some anger here when people learned the Hondius was being diverted to their island.
On Friday, a group of port workers gathered outside the local parliament in noisy protest, concerned that safety measures were not strong enough.
Then very late last night, all the carefully laid plans were briefly thrown into chaos when the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, said he would refuse to permit the ship into port as the disembarkation could not be done in a day. The central government in Madrid had to intervene.
Clavijo then claimed on TV that a rat carrying the hantavirus might “get off the ship in the middle of the night and endanger the people of the Canary Islands”. The health secretary had to come out and insist that such a scenario was “not a risk”.
In general, people on the island seem reassured that the risk is low.
“The virus is dangerous, of course. But they say you need to have very close contact to get it,” a woman named Jennifer told me, out walking with her child in Tenerife’s capital Santa Cruz.
“If we’re careful, we hope it’s not too serious.”
Not everyone will disembark in Tenerife from the Hondius: some 30 crew members will stay on board to take the cruise ship back to the Netherlands. But for most, there is at last an end in sight to weeks of fear and uncertainty at sea.
Now come the long weeks of quarantine.
[BBC]
The Landslide Early Warning Center of the Building Research Organisation [NBRO| has issued Landslide Early Warnings to the Districts of Badulla and Moneragala valid upto 2130 hrs today [10th May 2026]
Accordingly,
Level I [Yellow] landslide early warnings have been issued to the Divisional Secretaries Divisions and surrounding areas of Passara in the Badulla district and Badalkumbura and Wellawaya in the Monaragala District.
Spain starts evacuating virus-hit cruise ship in Tenerife
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