Asked what Donald Trump meant by accepting only “unconditional surrender,” Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that it will be achieved when the president “determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America” and the mission’s goals have “been fully realised.” 

“Then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” she told reporters outside the White House “whether they say it themselves or not. Frankly, they don’t have a lot of people to say that for them.”

-AP

U.S. President Donald Trump’s top national security advisers spent much of the day on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) making the case to Congress for the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, describing a rapidly ‌evolving operation and leaving open the possibility of sending in American troops, Democrats and Trump’s fellow Republicans said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and General Dan ⁠Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held classified briefings first for the entire Senate and later the full House of Representatives.

Missouri Republican Josh Hawley told reporters afterward the operation was massive and changing rapidly. “The briefers emphasised this: it’s really changing almost by the hour, and I think the scope ‌of it is very broad,” he said.

– Reuters