U.S. President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa that "the only reason I haven't finished with Iran yet is because I want to be nice. I want to try to save the lives of all these people, if I can. And they're sitting there in a very bad situation. But at some point we'll have to drop the hammer on them." According to him, "most of what they had has already been destroyed. Their ships, their planes, most of them are already gone."

