President Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has “really taken it to” the Islamic regime in Iran to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon, tying a memorial event for the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 to the current war in the Middle East.
Mr. Trump praised the bravery of first responders in the 2001 attacks carried out by al Qaeda terrorists, many of them from Saudi Arabia, and leader Osama bin Laden, who operated his network from Afghanistan.
The president said he would eliminate the separate threat — today — from Tehran.
“We will never forget. We say it, and we mean it,” Mr. Trump said at a “Steel Across America” event on the White House Ellipse.
“We’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Trump said of Iran. “They were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance of getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Mr. Trump, working with Israel, launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28. Iran retaliated by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, an oil chokepoint, leading to months of fighting, diplomacy and economic pressure.
“We’ve really taken it to them,” Mr. Trump said of the Iran war. “Nobody thought it could go so well.”
Stocks dropped to start the shortened trading week on Tuesday as oil prices rose to nearly $100 per barrel because of new Middle East turmoil.
Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked oil sites in Saudi Arabia, hurting 73 people and disrupting oil markets.
Steel Across America is a project in which a 16,900-pound steel beam from the South Tower at the World Trade Center is taken across the country from May to September to remember the tragedy and its victims.
The beam is traveling more than 10,000 miles and making 35 stops in 21 states and the District before ending its journey at Ground Zero on Friday.
The effort is being led by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation nonprofit that memorializes Sept. 11 and Stephen Siller, a firefighter who raced through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to help after the attacks and died at Ground Zero.
Tunnels to Towers CEO and Chairman Frank Siller presented Mr. Trump with a framed memorial flag that featured steel from Ground Zero.
Mr. Trump recalled how Sept. 11, 2001, was a clear, calm day before an alert came over the television about the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the Pentagon outside Washington and on United Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Trump said he looked outside in Manhattan and “saw things I never want to see again.”
“We’re never going to see it again,” he said.
Mr. Trump on Wednesday awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom to family members of Welles Crowther, a 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter who covered his face with a red bandana and guided people to safety in the South Tower of the World Trade Center before dying in the tower collapse.
Mr. Trump also acknowledged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who lost family members and many coworkers at Cantor Fitzgerald, the company he led at the time, in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Mr. Lutnick had taken his young son to school that day, likely sparing his life.
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