President Donald Trump vowed Friday that the United States would “never, ever forget” the September 11, 2001 attacks, while linking the country’s “war on terror” a quarter of a century later to its conflict with Iran.
Speaking at the Pentagon, Trump also criticised domestic “fanatics” in an apparent attack on Democrats, after skipping the main 9/11 commemorations in New York.
“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago. We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today,” Trump said in his speech.
“We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win,” he added, alongside First Lady Melania Trump.
One of the four planes hijacked during the September 11 attacks crashed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people. Their names were read aloud during a ceremony Friday, accompanied by the tolling of a single bell.
Previous presidents have marked major 9/11 anniversaries by visiting several sites, including New York, where the majority of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks died when two hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center.
Trump used the anniversary to draw a direct connection between the US military campaign against Al-Qaeda launched under Republican president George W. Bush and the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran, now in its seventh month.
“Today we salute every member of the United States military who served in the ‘War on Terror.’ It is a war on sick, horrible terror,” Trump said.
“And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also used his remarks at the Pentagon ceremony to condemn Iran.
“Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism. Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century,” Hegseth said.
The Iran conflict has settled into a stalemate, with Tehran largely maintaining its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and keeping oil prices elevated despite sporadic exchanges of fire with US forces.
Trump also turned his attention to domestic politics, a day after a Republican convention ahead of the US midterm elections where he and Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of sympathising with the September 11 attackers.
“A generation after 9/11, we also know that the final response to those atrocities and the ultimate victory over the perpetrators will not be found on a foreign battlefield,” Trump said.
He recounted the story of a firefighter who was killed in the attacks and whose son later became a US Navy veteran, saying it demonstrated that “we can be a nation whose heroes are not fanatics for an abstract cause.”
Trump had used similar language at the Republican convention on Wednesday, telling supporters: “With your vote in this election, you can tell these far-left lunatics and fanatics that America is not for sale to them or to anybody else.”
Republicans at the convention repeatedly targeted left-wing Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed over previous social media posts concerning 9/11.
The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group against the United States on September 11, 2001.
Nineteen hijackers seized four commercial airliners. Two planes were flown into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York, causing both buildings to collapse. A third crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, while passengers aboard the fourth fought back against the hijackers, forcing the plane to crash into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, before it could reach its intended target.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks. In the years since, many more have died from illnesses linked to 9/11, including diseases associated with exposure to toxic dust at the attack sites.
