Donald Trump says Middle East is ‘saved’ as Iran strikes injure US troops in Gulf

On Friday evening, while onstage at a finance conference in Miami Beach for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment fund, US President Donald Trump boasted that the world was “closer than ever to the rise of the Middle East” because of US dominance in the war with Iran.

Yet even as the president was speaking, news broke that an Iranian missile strike had injured US service members stationed at an air base in Saudi Arabia, the “powerful” nation whose protection he said the United States had ensured. At least 12 Americans were hurt in the attack, two of them seriously injured, according to U.S. officials.

Mr Trump appeared to be unaware in the moment of the combined missile and drone attack, which was one of the most serious breaches of US air defences in the course of the month-long war. While onstage, he continued to praise the dominance of the United States and its Persian Gulf allies. The result was an unsettling, split-screen reminder that despite Trump’s contention, the war is far from resolved and could risk more American lives.

“We saved not just Israel, we saved the Middle East — and it was proven by all those rockets that fired down upon you,” Mr Trump said. It is unclear whether Trump knew that Americans had been injured in an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base as he continued to boast that Iran was “begging to make a deal” after a “crushing” assault from US forces.

The White House did not respond to an inquiry during Trump’s speech about whether he was aware of the attack, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. As of Friday night, Mr Trump had not acknowledged the strike on the Saudi base, although he continued to post to his social media.

The onslaught of attacks from Iran has killed at least 13 US service members in the Middle East.

Influential leaders from the region were in the audience Friday, including Yasir al-Rumayyan, the leader of the Saudi wealth fund that arranges the annual event, at which Trump also spoke last year.

Al-Rumayyan was seen sitting next to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, delivered remarks at the event Thursday, while Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, spoke Friday. Kushner and Witkoff are administration officials whom the president has trusted to negotiate with Iran. The Trump family has faced criticism for its business ties to Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s attacks in the Gulf region have included strikes on an oil refinery and the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia. Dozens of residents have been injured.

Still, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing Trump to keep up the war until Iran’s hard-line government is destroyed, The New York Times reported this week. Senior officials in both nations have warned that the conflict could stretch into an endless war.

Mr Trump has made contradictory public comments on the timeline for the war, and his objectives for ending the conflict. In his remarks Friday, the president said that the United States had some 3,500 additional targets left in Iran and that they would be “done pretty quickly.”

That is in comparison with the more than 10,000 that the United States has struck since the start of the war, Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said earlier this week.

At the end of his remarks, Trump hinted toward an escalating rift with NATO, which he has maligned for years but has invoked in the war with Iran.

“Unlike NATO,” Trump said, “Saudi Arabia fought, Qatar fought, UAE fought, Bahrain fought and Kuwait fought.”

European officials have been less than enthusiastic about becoming involved in the conflict with Iran, namely by sending forces to help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial international trade route, as Trump has asked them to do.

On Friday, Trump appeared to go a step further, suggesting that Europe’s unwillingness to become involved in the conflict with Iran meant that Americans did not have to honor their commitment to come to Europe’s aid as part of the treaty’s mutual self-defense clause.

“We would have always been there for them,” Trump said of NATO, which includes the United States, Canada and more than a dozen European nations. “But now, based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be. Do we?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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