Iran war marks ‘beginning of a new country’, says Donald Trump

Donald Trump speaks at a news conference (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

Donald Trump has said the US war with Iran is “very complete” but it is also “the beginning” of “a new country”.

The US president’s comments at a press conference in Florida seemed to suggest Washington might be engaged in the building of a new Iran.

Though he has long professed an “America First” policy prioritising the US, Mr Trump suggested the war was for the benefit of other nations, especially those dependent on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.

“I mean, we’re doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China,” he said.

Mr Trump told reporters that the war began because Iran was starting work on a new site for developing material for nuclear weapons.

He said the new site was meant to replace facilities bombed last year by the US.

“But they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site — and that was protected by granite,” Mr Trump said.

The president added that Tehran wanted to use the “exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon”, claiming that Iran would have otherwise been able to take over the Middle East.