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‘We’ll knock the hell out of them’: Trump isn’t messing around with Iran

December 30, 2025 | | Print Article

Amid growing unrest, talk of regime change, and reported renewed armament efforts, President Donald Trump indicated what Iranian action would give cause to “knock the hell out of them.”

On Monday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, the president hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With protests spreading across Iran over currency collapse as the Islamist regime is said to be focusing on rebuilding its weapons program, Trump offered his full support for a “fast” response if the decimated nuclear program was renewed.

“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” the commander-in-chief said with Netanyahu by his side. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”

“We just won a big war together. If we didn’t beat Iran, you wouldn’t have had peace in the Middle East. We wiped it out,” expressed the president, little more than six months after Operation Midnight Hammer ushered forth the end of the 12-day war with strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

As to supporting further military action from Israel, Trump said of Iran, “If they continue with the missiles — yes. The nuclear — fast.”

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His position was reiterated later during a joint press conference with the prime minister, “Speaking of Iran, I hope they’re not trying to build up again, because if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that build up.”

Referring to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber that was deployed in a nearly 40-hour round-trip mission to strike the nuclear program, the commander-in-chief remarked, “I don’t want to waste the fuel.”

Trump referred to reports that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has increased efforts to produce missile payloads, including those for biological and chemical weapons, a detail denied by the Iranian government.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Benham Ben Taleblu told Fox News that unconventional payloads were not new for Iran, despite its ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997.

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Referring to the capacities of the warheads used by Iran during the 12-day war, Taleblu considered the strikes “a dry run for a potential chemical attack.” Meanwhile, he lauded the president’s response to the Islamist regime’s posture, expressing, “Trump has just done what no president ever promised, to deal directly and militarily with Iran’s ballistic missile program in support of Israel. This is historic.”

“Iran’s ballistic missiles have been used not just against Israel, but U.S. forces and U.S. bases in the region as well, both direct and by proxy. A commitment to countering this threat is priority number one for building a better and safer Middle East,” he went on.

At the same time, protests were taking place in Iran with clashes reported in Tehran and Mashhad as the regime’s security forces resorted to the use of tear gas against crowds chanting “Shameless! Shameless!” and “Death to the dictator.”

Demands were being made for President Masoud Pezeshkian to step down while the official appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei following his 2024 election reportedly sought dialogue with the protesters as of Monday, according to Iran International.

At the heart of the clashes, Iranians are contending with volatile economic forces. As of December, inflation exceeded 50% compared to the year prior and was averaging about 42% annually. Further, the National Council of Resistance of Iran President-elect Maryam Rajavi said in a statement that the people were also rising against political repression.

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U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz posted to X, “The people of Iran want freedom. They have suffered at the hands of the Ayatollahs for too long. We stand with Iranians in the streets of Tehran and across the country as they protest a radical regime that has brought them nothing but economic downturn and war.”

As for the president’s position where it concerns leadership, Trump rejected the idea of involvement in regime change and said Monday, “I’m not going to talk about overthrow of a regime. But they have tremendous inflation. Their economy is busted.”

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Favoring negotiations over having to order strikes “more powerful than the last time,” the chief executive reminded, “Before the war, I said, let’s negotiate.”

Kevin Haggerty
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