King Charles, Queen Camilla will make state visit to US in April

(LONDON) — The massive strikes conducted by the U.S. and Israel on Saturday — dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” by American forces — have been in the works over the past several “months leading up to the attack,” according to Israel officials.

In the first IDF statement following the attack on Iran, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said that “the strike included an attack on dozens of military targets.”

The statement also highlighted what appears to be the IDF’s close cooperation with United States across months of planning. The United States has not yet mentioned anything about the planning of the operation or how long it has been in the works for.

“In the months leading up to the attack, close joint planning was carried out between the IDF and the U.S. Army, which enabled the broad attack to be carried out with maximum synchronization and coordination between the armies,” the IDF said.

“The Iranian regime has not abandoned its plan to destroy Israel,” the statement continued. “The IDF has recognized that the regime has continued its attempts to fortify, protect, and conceal its nuclear programs, along with restoring the missile production process.

“The regime has continued to finance, train, and arm its proxies based within the borders of the State of Israel,” the IDF said. “These are actions that constitute an existential threat to the State of Israel, and threaten the Middle East and the entire world.”

The strikes involved a mix of U.S. aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by U.S. Navy ships in the region, according to a U.S. official.

There are currently an estimated 35,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in the Middle East at the moment.

The U.S. already has large military bases in the region, with Al Udeid in Qatar being the largest with around 10,000 personnel. Close by in Bahrain, there are about 3,200 personnel and dependents stationed at the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters.

There are also an estimated 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria, even as they prepare to draw down and leave the country, as well as another 2,500 troops in Iraq now mostly located in Erbil to the north.

The U.S. also has dozens more fighter jets in the Middle East than there were in mid-January.

An aircraft carrier — the USS Gerald R. Ford — along with up to four destroyers may soon join the 12 Navy ships already in the region, that includes the USS Abraham Lincoln.

In response, Iran immediately accused the U.S. of violating “all international laws and during negotiations.”

“Now is the time to defend the homeland and confront the enemy’s military aggression,” a statement released from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday. “Just as we were ready for negotiations, we have been more prepared than ever for defense. The armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to the aggressors with authority.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Trump administration officials told congressional staff in private briefings on Sunday that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the United States interests, four people familiar with the briefing told ABC News.

The officials said there was more of a general threat in the region from Iran’s missiles and proxy forces, sources told ABC News.

The intel shared with staff appears to contradict some of President Donald Trump and the White House’s previous statements about Iran and the reasoning for attacking the country.

The president said in his video address announcing the strikes, “our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”

On a call with reporters this weekend, senior Trump administration officials said there were indicators that Iranians could launch a preemptive attack against U.S. forces and allies in the region.

While Trump was meeting with military leaders this weekend, he spoke with ABC News about the general threat from the Iranian regime.

“I think there was a threat. Had we not done Midnight Hammer, which was one of the greatest things [this] country has ever done, we would’ve been faced with a nuclear weapon within a month — we would have been faced with a very powerful nuclear weapon within a month,” Trump said this weekend.

“And then they were trying to build back –not there because that area was obliterated, but they were working on another site despite the negotiations  —  which at some points were going very well,” Trump continued. “But in the end we didn’t think they were going to get there [in terms of negotiations]. And they would’ve had in a fairly short period of time some very fairly big nuclear capacity and we were not going to put up with that.”

During a press briefing Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attack was a response to Iranian aggression against the U.S. over a number of years.

“We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. Their war on Americans has become our retribution against their Ayatollah and his death cult,” Hegseth said. “It took the 47th president, a fighter who always puts America first, to finally draw the line after 47 years of Iranian belligerence.”

The U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Israel on Saturday, killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Trump told Fox News’s Bret Baier on Monday that 49 senior leaders were killed in the initial strikes.

Following the start of the U.S.-Israel operation, Iran launched retaliatory strikes with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases and Gulf nations.

The conflict has resulted in at least four deaths of U.S. servicemembers so far, but military officials said Monday more deaths are expected.

“We expect to take additional losses,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a briefing. “And, as always, we will work to minimize U.S. losses. But as the secretary said, this is major combat operations.”

Caine did not specify a timeline, but said, “This is not a single overnight operation. The military objective … will take some time to achieve.”

Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the U.S. military is “knocking the crap” out of Iran — but the “big wave” is yet to come.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” Trump told Tapper Monday morning.

CNN was the first to report on what the Trump admin told congressional staff.

–ABC News’ John Parkinson and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.

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(LONDON )– Denmark’s new government was less than two months old when U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign to acquire Greenland broke into public view in the summer of 2019.

“We thought it was unprecedented,” recalled former Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod, who then was in post and suddenly tasked with a transcontinental fire drill. 

Trump’s desire for what he at the time called “essentially a large real estate deal” threw a wrench in the works of a planned state visit by the president to Denmark. The president ultimately cancelled the trip, saying Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had shown “no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland.”

Frederiksen at the time rejected Trump’s proposal as “absurd.”

Kofod, who has since left Danish politics, told ABC News in an interview on Tuesday that the 2019 saga was “a really bad situation for the bilateral relationship.” 

“We also saw it as offending a close ally,” Kofod recalled. “We were very surprised that the first major comments he had were, ‘Why can’t I just buy Greenland?'”

Copenhagen, he said, never considered formulating a price for Greenland’s potential sale.

At the time, though, Danish leaders did not believe Trump was “determined” to force a U.S. acquisition of the world’s largest island, Kofod said. Rather, the Danish government saw the proposal as a means to foster more U.S. engagement in and influence over Greenland.

Nearly seven years later, Kofod’s successors — again under the leadership of Frederiksen — have faced a more protracted and aggressive campaign from Washington. Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. will acquire Greenland — “one way or another,” he said earlier this month.

Greenland is a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Trump’s second term has seen the president double down on his ambition to acquire the minerals-rich island — despite Danish and Greenlandic politicians repeatedly rebuffing him.

Trump has suggested that U.S. sovereignty over Greenland is necessary to ensure American security and blunt Chinese and Russian influence in the Arctic region. A 1951 defense agreement already grants the U.S. military access to Greenland, but Trump has suggested the accord is inadequate and has demanded “ownership.”

The issue dominated this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Trump said in a Wednesday address that he would not use military force to seize control of the Arctic landmass.

On Wednesday, Trump said during the event that a “framework” of a deal had been reached on Greenland after talks with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Details of the purported agreement are yet to be revealed.

Frederikson said in a Thursday morning statement that Copenhagen “cannot negotiate on our sovereignty.”

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said at a Thursday press conference that Nuuk is “willing to do more in a NATO frame,” but also said they have some “red lines” including territorial integrity, international law and sovereignty.

In Davos on Wednesday, Trump said that Greenland’s mineral deposits are “not the reason we need it,” though also said the professed deal “puts everybody in a really good position, especially as it pertains to security and to minerals.”

Trump’s professed security concerns have prompted Danish efforts to increase military spending in the Arctic and the deployment of small contingents of NATO troops to Greenland. 

But the deployments — which the eight European nations involved said were for military exercises to enhance the defense of the region — prompted Trump at the time to threaten new tariffs against the American allies starting on Feb. 1 unless the U.S. was able to acquire Greenland.

That raised the prospect of a new transatlantic trade war, though Trump said Wednesday that he would drop the tariffs citing the purported deal.

European and allied leaders have said they are open to deeper and broader cooperation with the U.S. in Greenland, to address American security concerns and to develop shared commercial opportunities across the mammoth, resources-rich territory.

For Kofod — who said his time in office saw Copenhagen and Washington forge a “path forward” despite tensions over Greenland — any deal should be twinned with a European show of force.

“The first step is power,” Kofod said. Trump may soften his attacks “if he sees that he will have all of Europe — including the U.K., France, Germany — against him, and they are ready to defend Greenland,” Kofod said, plus if he sees that European “retaliation is so massive that it will hurt the U.S. economy and interests.”

“Trump plays with all the instruments he has. Europe has to learn to play the power game,” Kofod said, and “move him to a narrower path if this is going to stop.”

The Danish and Greenlandic experience in 2019 bears striking similarities to 2026. Then, as now, Trump set off a diplomatic storm by repeatedly declaring his ambitions to take control of Greenland. 

In both instances, Copenhagen and the Greenlandic government in its capital Nuuk responded by expressing openness to further collaboration, stressing the importance of sovereignty and dispatching a high-level delegation for talks in Washington.

Kofod said the de-escalation of tensions in 2019 was achieved through closer cooperation and modernization in the security sphere. “We took the security concerns of Trump very seriously,” he said.

The period spanning Trump’s first term and that of his successor, President Joe Biden, saw the U.S. reopen its consulate in Nuuk, modernize the Thule Air Base — since renamed to the Pituffik Space Base — and agree a new economic cooperation strategy in Greenland.

Copenhagen and Nuuk, Kofod said, encouraged “constructive engagement” with the U.S. in investment, education programs, tourism and other areas.

Similar measures might help ease the current round of pressure in the High North, Kofod said.

But he added that the future of the Arctic — which was long considered an area of scientific work largely free of geopolitical tensions — will be inextricably tied to security considerations.

Climate change, the subsequent melting of pack ice and the opening of new sea lanes is making the Arctic more navigable and — potentially — more lucrative. Russia’s 15,000 miles of Arctic coastline puts Moscow at the forefront in the region, while China’s declaration of itself as a “near-Arctic state” indicates Beijing’s long-term interest there.

“That’s why Trump is right on the concern about security in the future of the Arctic,” Kofod said. “Any U.S. president will find Greenland key to defending North America and the United States.”

Trump’s efforts “fit his ideology,” Kofod said, saying his bid to acquire Greenland despite broad opposition aligns with the “Donroe Doctrine” — a play on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine by which the U.S. said it would block European interference in the Western Hemisphere — which has in recent weeks been professed by members of Trump’s administration and noted by the president himself.

“There is something to that, that I think Europe hasn’t taken seriously enough,” Kofod said. “But now they are taking it seriously.”

The turbulence will undermine European, American and collective NATO security, Kofod warned. 

“For the U.S. it’s also a big self-inflicted problem,” he said. “But I don’t think Trump looks at the world like that. He  thinks that NATO is there, it’s important, but it’s not something you cannot live without, because you just can form another alliance.”

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