{"id":22648,"date":"2026-03-17T02:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/22648\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T02:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:06:10","slug":"trump-says-a-predecessor-told-him-he-wishes-hed-attacked-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/22648\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says a predecessor told him he wishes he’d attacked Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Twice on Monday, President Donald Trump<\/a> said he\u2019d wrangled a confession of sorts from an Oval Office predecessor who he said had expressed regret in a private conversation about not attacking Iran the way Trump has been doing<\/a> for more than two weeks.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s just a little problem: Representatives for the four living former presidents \u2014 three Democrats and one Republican \u2014 said none have been in touch with Trump recently.<\/p>\n

Trump declined to name the former president when reporters asked who it was, saying he didn\u2019t want to \u201cembarrass him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican president first told the story during extended remarks about the Iran war as he opened a meeting of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center<\/a>. Trump is chairman of the board and held the meeting at the White House. <\/p>\n

He repeated that Iran had been a threat to the United States for decades but said he is the only president who had the courage to do something about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I\u2019m doing, and they should have done it a long time ago,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would have been a lot easier. There\u2019s no president that wanted to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet every president knew. I\u2019ve spoken to a certain president, who I like, actually, a past president, a former president. He said, \u2018I wish I did it, I wish I did,\u2019 but they didn\u2019t do it. I\u2019m doing it,\u201d Trump continued.<\/p>\n

Asked which former president he\u2019d spoken to, Trump said: \u201cI can\u2019t tell you that. I don\u2019t want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career, even though he\u2019s got no career.\u201d <\/p>\n

Representatives for each of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden said they had not spoken with Trump recently. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the former presidents\u2019 private conversations.<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment after being informed that none of the former presidents said he had spoken with Trump recently.<\/p>\n

Trump and all four past presidents were last together in the same space for his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025 \u2014 well before the war. <\/p>\n

He has been extremely critical of Biden and Obama, often saying Biden is the \u201cworst president in the history of our country\u201d and accusing Obama of negotiating a \u201chorrible deal\u201d with Iran over its nuclear weapons. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement the first time he was president. <\/p>\n

But the Republican recently offered sympathetic comments about Clinton, saying it \u201cbothers\u201d him that the former president had been called to give a deposition to Congress<\/a> about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,\u201d Trump said in a Feb. 4 interview with NBC News. \u201cI liked his behavior toward me. I thought he got me, he understood me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump repeated his story about discussing Iran with a former president later Monday in the Oval Office, where he announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a task force that was created to eliminate fraud in federal benefit programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it George W. Bush?\u201d a reporter asked. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Trump said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWas it Bill Clinton?\u201d the reporter asked. <\/p>\n

Trump said: \u201cI don\u2019t want to say. I don\u2019t want to say,\u201d then added that \u201cit\u2019s somebody that happens to like me. And I like that person, who\u2019s a smart person. But that person said, \u2018I wish I did it,\u2019 OK, but I don\u2019t want to get into who, OK. I don\u2019t want to get them into trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Twice on Monday, President Donald Trump said he\u2019d wrangled a confession of sorts from an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2019,4313,11249,4734,38,197,1683,34,196,1096,3824,802,81,782,771,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-22648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-bill-clinton","10":"tag-dc-wire","11":"tag-district-of-columbia","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-george-w-bush","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-iran-war","17":"tag-jd-vance","18":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","19":"tag-joe-biden","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-u-s-news","22":"tag-washington-news","23":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116242073687274678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}