Trump says war could last weeks and offers contradictory visions of new regime

President Donald Trump said Sunday that the U.S. military intends to sustain its assault on Iran for "four to five weeks" if necessary, insisting that it "won't be difficult" for Israel and the United States to maintain the intensity of the battle even as he warned of the possibility of more American casualties.

In a brief telephone interview with The New York Times, Trump offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government -- or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.

Among the options he suggested was an outcome similar to what he engineered in Venezuela, in which only the top leader was removed during an American military strike and much of the rest of the government remained in place, but newly willing to work pragmatically with the United States.


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The assault on Iran is considered far more complex and risky than the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, who was Venezuela's leader.

The interview with Trump seemed to reflect the degree to which his administration remains uncertain about how the next few weeks will unfold, both on the battlefield and in the creation of a replacement government in Tehran.

But he insisted the Pentagon retained plenty of forces, missiles and bombs to sustain the military assault "if we have to."

Asked how long the United States and Israel could keep up this level of attacks, he responded: "Well, we intended four to five weeks."

During the roughly six-minute call, Trump said he had "three very good choices" about who could lead Iran, although he declined to name them. Earlier Sunday, Iran's top national security official, Ali Larijani, said that an interim committee would run the country until a successor to the supreme leader was chosen.

The president offered a variety of often inconsistent visions of how a new government could take shape after the targeted killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Also read: Iran suggests it's open to talks and Trump says he's 'eventually' willing

When pressed on his plans for a transition of power, Trump said he hoped Iran's elite military forces would simply turn over their weapons to the Iranian populace.

Then he offered a very different model of what the transition of power in Iran might look like, referring repeatedly to his experience in Venezuela after he ordered a Delta Force team to seize Maduro.

He also described a scenario in which the Iranian people would overthrow the existing government. That would be the opposite of the Venezuela model that he had said minutes earlier he wanted to replicate.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.