'President Trump Is Ending It': Mike Waltz Erupts At NBC Host Over Iran
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz forcefully pushed back Sunday against claims that the United States had entered a new war with Iran, challenging the premise during a tense exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press.
The questioning came from host Kristen Welker after President Donald J. Trump confirmed that U.S. forces, working alongside the Israel Defense Forces, had carried out targeted strikes on facilities tied to the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump announced the operation in a video message posted to the social media platform Truth Social early Feb. 28.
Welker pressed Waltz on whether the administration considered the operation the start of a war.
“As you know, words matter, does the Trump administration — do you — describe this as a war against Iran?” Welker asked.
Waltz rejected the framing, arguing that Tehran’s aggression toward the United States has been ongoing for decades.
“Well, I describe it as Iran has been at war with us, as I just said,” Waltz responded.
Welker followed up directly: “So, it is a war?”
Waltz replied sharply, “President Trump is ending it. I will leave it to the lawyers and those who deal with Congress in terms of the War Powers Act, which every administration has viewed as unconstitutional. That said, Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio has been there day after day and week after week in the recent months to appropriately brief congressional leaders.”
The debate comes as congressional Democrats attempted to block continued U.S. military operations against the Iranian regime. Those efforts ultimately failed in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, allowing the administration’s strategy to move forward.
Waltz emphasized that Iranian-backed attacks have claimed American lives for years, arguing that critics ignore the long trail of casualties caused by Tehran and its proxy networks.
“I’ll tell you, you know who does believe, that they are being attacked? It is the soldiers that have been buried for many, many years as a result of Iranian attacks and the proxy attacks. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis [killed] over 600 American soldiers, so, I need— we need to take a look and look at how many billions, how much time, how much treasure that administration after administration has spent dealing with this,” Waltz said.
The violence escalated further when an Iranian strike struck a technical operations center in Kuwait City on March 1, killing six American service members.
The latest confrontation follows a precedent set during Trump’s first administration, when U.S. forces eliminated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a January 2020 strike. Soleimani, a senior commander within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was widely blamed for orchestrating attacks on U.S. forces across the Middle East.
According to U.S. officials, Soleimani played a central role in supplying components for advanced improvised explosive devices used against American troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—devices responsible for numerous battlefield casualties.
The Trump administration has framed its current actions not as the start of a new conflict but as part of a long-overdue effort to dismantle the network of state-sponsored terrorism that has targeted Americans for decades.