WASHINGTON, March 14. /TASS/. Washington would never allow Tehran to have nuclear weapons, US President Donald Trump said.

"Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East," US President Trump wrote on his Truth Social network account.

"Iran has no ability to defend anything that we want to attack - there is nothing they can do about it," he pointed out.

The US president added that for Iran it "would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much."

The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.

The Assembly of Experts of the Islamic Republic of Iran later announced the election of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the assassinated ayatollah, as the country’s new Supreme Leader.