March 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump warned Saturday morning that “Iran will be hit very hard” in the wake of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s rejection of Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender.”
“Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a pre-recorded statement earlier Saturday, rejecting Trump’s Friday call for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”
Pezeshkian said his country’s adversaries “must take their dream of the Iranian people’s unconditional surrender to their graves.”
He also issued an apology for neighboring countries targeted by drone and missile attacks over the course of the past eight days. Pezeshkian said Iran’s temporary leadership council approved a motion to suspend attacks on nearby countries, unless attacks on Iran originated from those locations.
“I personally apologize to neighboring countries that were affected by Iran’s actions,” he said.
The conflict entered its eighth day on Saturday, after joint airstrikes by Israel and the United States that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on Feb. 28.
Iranian state media reported 1,332 people in the country had been killed in the conflict as of Friday, including about 180 young children in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab.
Six U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian drone in Kuwait that injured 18 others. Trump said he will attend a dignified transfer for the slain troops at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday.
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