Americans wouldn’t be wrong to fear retaliatory attacks on the U.S. as part of the war with Iran, according to President Donald Trump.
“I guess,” Trump told TIME when asked if those in the United States should worry about domestic attacks.
“But I think they’re worried about that all the time,” Trump added. “We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Attacks and plots in the U.S. by foreign adversaries and extremist groups were a common feature during the War on Terror over the first two decades of the 2000s.
Critics of the president were alarmed by his comments on Iran.
“This is deranged and dangerous,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on X.
Six Americans were killed as part of the conflict when an unmanned aircraft hit a U.S. facility in Kuwait, but so far attacks haven’t arrived on U.S. shores.
The president’s comments were at odds with his administration’s confident updates about the war, which have stressed the U.S. domination of Iranian airspace and the weekend strike that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Elsewhere, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday sought to reassure Americans they wouldn’t be facing security threats in the U.S., despite the impending departure of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“I don’t have any concerns about whether or not the homeland will be covered down on,” he said during a press briefing at U.S. Central Command in Florida on Thursday.
In addition to the turmoil at DHS, the FBI reportedly fired members of a global counterespionage unit with deep Iran experience in the days before the war broke out as retaliation for their involvement in the Trump classified documents investigation.
Elsewhere in the TIME interview, President Trump reiterated that the war with Iran has no fixed end date.
“I have no time limits on anything,” he said. “I want to get it done.”
Part of finishing the conflict, Trump said, would mean Iran elevating a new pro-U.S. leader, a process the president insists on being a part of.
“One of the things I’m going to be asking for is the ability to work with them on choosing a new leader,” Trump said. “I’m not going through this to end up with another Khamenei. I want to be involved in the selection. They can select, but we have to make sure it’s somebody that’s reasonable to the United States.”
The president’s commitment to an open-ended war in Iran involving regime change flies in the face of his campaign commitments to avoid foreign conflicts, and Americans are increasingly souring on the war.
A Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted for NBC News found 54 percent of American voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the situation in Iran and 41 percent approve.
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