The terrorist threat was one of the main reasons Israel and the US decided to start a war with Iran.
Taken from Trump’s speech following the start of US and Israeli strikes against Iran, February 28, 2026 (full text is in the link):
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime — a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.
From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts.
And it was Iran’s proxy Hamas that launched the monstrous October 7 attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.
Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.
It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again. They can never have a nuclear weapon.
That is why, in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime’s nuclear program at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it again. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil.
But Iran refused (to make a deal), just as it has for decades and decades. They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.
Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.
Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message.
For these reasons, the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.
We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated.
We are going to annihilate their navy. We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their IEDs — or roadside bombs, as they are sometimes called — to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans.
And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It’s a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-trumps-declaration-of-major-combat-operations-against-iran/