There's a reason we changed our name from the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

Not because we seek war. Not because we want more war.

Frankly, we want peace.

If war is necessary, we're going to fight to win.

President Trump is right when he says we obliterated their nuclear program. He’s right. We did. We dropped those bombs exactly where they needed to be, set them back.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped their pursuit.

We want the Iranians guessing and second-guessing and triple-guessing what we might be willing to do, because under Trump, we just might.

It’s not a regime change war in the conventional George W. Bush context of hundreds of thousands of troops.

I mean, in Afghanistan what I watched as a young captain was Americans thinking we were going to remake a society that was basically biblical times with AK-47s and cell phones.

The hubris of thinking we were going to take Afghanistan and turn it into a Jeffersonian democracy by building Western-style forces and Western-style institutions — it was never going to work.

This is not a remaking of Iranian society from an American perspective. We tried that. The American people have rejected that.

Things like this don’t happen without casualties. There will be more casualties.

Especially our generation knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets.

But that doesn’t weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say, "This is a fight we will finish."

I’m a man of faith who encourages our troops to lean into their faith. Rely on God. There’s no atheists in foxholes. Your mortality is right in front of you.

I remember prayer for me on combat missions, how important that was.

My Christian faith — faith in general — is important to President Trump. It’s important in our fighting ranks to give them perspective on human nature, on their own humanity, on our own mortality.

We lost a lot of that with sort of self-help, self-esteem nonsense, which is not what troops need.

I think part of the reason recruiting is so high in our military right now is they understand they’ve got leadership that has their back, that has walked in their boots, that’s not going to use them callously or recklessly or for some nebulous mission, but is going to pour into them and give them every authority they need to be successful.

The goals of this mission are clear, and it is important to continue to remind the American people of why it is that the greatest military in the history of the world is engaged in this operation.

It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles by destroying their missiles and their launchers, destroy the factories that make these missiles, and destroy their Navy.

Your military is getting the job done.

The world is going to be a safer and a better place when this mission is accomplished.

When it comes to hostage-taking, there has been no worse offender in the world than the clerical regime in Tehran.

They are the worst offenders in the world of terrorism and hostage-taking.

Russian and Iranian media claimed earlier today that a U.S. patriot missile missed while intercepting an Iranian missile or drone and inadvertently hit a neighborhood in Bahrain. LIE.

What really happened: An Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood, injuring 32 civilians in Bahrain, including children who required medical treatment, according to Bahrain’s government. TRUTH.

The words of President Pezeshkian have been misinterpreted. He emphasized that any source of aggression will be responded to.

We have expressed our regret that the defense operations caused harm to non-military people.

We do not apologize for our defense of Iran. We believe in our right to defend, and we do not apologize for this reason.

Once again, we do not have any enemies in this region. The problem is from the United States and its military bases in the region.

Laws do not allow any country to grant its territory to any other country for the purpose of attacking a third country.

The United States' military bases located in this region and the equipment and capabilities that it possesses in this region and the radars have been used to plan, implement, and support operations against us.

Iran is implementing its legitimate right and targeting the US military bases and military capabilities that it can use against us. We have carried out defensive attacks against the US military aggression and the Zionist entity.

The countries in the region must ask the US why it took advantage of the lands of these countries to attack another Muslim country in the month of Ramadan.