{"id":49894,"date":"2026-02-24T18:24:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T18:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/leavitt-says-trump-chooses-diplomacy-first-for-iran-but-remains-willing-to-use-lethal-force-if-necessary\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T18:24:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T18:24:26","slug":"leavitt-says-trump-chooses-diplomacy-first-for-iran-but-remains-willing-to-use-lethal-force-if-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/leavitt-says-trump-chooses-diplomacy-first-for-iran-but-remains-willing-to-use-lethal-force-if-necessary\/","title":{"rendered":"Leavitt says Trump chooses diplomacy first for Iran, but remains \u2018willing to use\u2019 lethal force if necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"speakable\">White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump\u2019s first option for Iran is &#8216;always diplomacy,&#8217; but that he is &#8216;willing to use the lethal force of the United States military if necessary.&#8217;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The remarks come after Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday that &#8216;it will be a very bad day&#8217; for Iran if the country can\u2019t strike a deal over its nuclear program.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;President Trump&#8217;s first&nbsp;option&nbsp;is always diplomacy. But as he has shown, he&nbsp;is willing to use the lethal force of the United States military if necessary.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the president is always the final decision-maker around here,&#8217; Leavitt said Tuesday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;And&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;seen a lot of&nbsp;sensationalist&nbsp;reporting over the past day that is just&nbsp;completely untrue. And anyone&nbsp;speculating&nbsp;to the media hiding behind an anonymous source, pretending to know what President Trump is thinking, or a decision he will make with respect to action against Iran has no idea what&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;talking about,&#8217; she added.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The president told reporters last week that he is &#8216;considering&#8217; a limited military strike on Iran to pressure its leaders into reaching a deal over its nuclear program.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. has recently been increasing its military assets in the Middle East, sending the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group toward the region.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The USS Abraham Lincoln and three guided-missile destroyers already are in the area.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so. I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don\u2019t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them,&#8217; Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div>This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump\u2019s first option for Iran is &#8216;always diplomacy,&#8217; but that he is &#8216;willing to use the lethal force of the United States military if necessary.&#8217;&nbsp; The remarks come after Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday that &#8216;it will be a very bad day&#8217; for <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/principleisapromise.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}