Trump says US ground invasion of Iran would be ‘waste of time,’ claims regime has ‘lost everything they can lose’

President Trump said late Thursday that a US ground invasion of Iran would be a “waste of time” because the Islamic Republic has already “lost everything” — after Tehran’s foreign minister said the regime was “waiting” for American and Israeli forces.

Trump called Abbas Araghchi’s claim a “wasted comment” in a phone interview with NBC News.

“It’s a waste of time,” the president said. “They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost their navy. They’ve lost everything they can lose.”

Earlier Thursday, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper revealed that more than 30 Iranian warships have been sunk or destroyed since the US launched Operation Epic Fury Feb. 28 — including the Shahid Soleimani-class IRIS Shahid Sayyad Shirazi and the frigate IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka, with the latter operation killing at least 87 sailors.

The US also attacked a drone carrier — IRIS Shahid Bagheri — and set the vessel ablaze, according to footage released by CENTCOM Thursday evening.

Smoke rises from an explosion in the direction of Ali Al Salem Air Base, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Al Jahra, Kuwait. via REUTERS

Cooper added that B-2 bombers had dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs on buried ballistic missile launchers and that US forces had hit Tehran’s version of Space Command.

“The US military is in the process of dismantling Iran’s missile production capability for the future,” Cooper said. “We’re not just hitting what they have. We’re destroying their ability to rebuild.”

Israel’s military launched “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on Friday against Tehran and Beirut, while ground forces clashed with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after the Islamic Republic fired drones and missiles into Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

In a separate interview with NBC Thursday, Aragchi said he was “confident” that Iran’s army would repel any ground invasion.

“We are waiting for them,” he said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

Iran faces a leadership vacuum after Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated. Getty Images

Iran has the largest active-duty military of any Middle Eastern nation, with an estimated 600,000 personnel mobilized.

Also Thursday night, Trump said he had some candidates in mind to run Iran following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war.

“We want to go in and clean out everything,” Trump told NBC News. “We don’t want someone who would rebuild over a 10-year period. We want them to have a good leader. We have some people who I think would do a good job.”

The president added that his administration was “watching” preferred candidates — whom Trump did not identify — to ensure they make it through the war alive.

A woman draped in a blanket after she was rescued after her home in Tehran was destroyed. Getty Images

While Khamenei’s son Mojtaba has been described as a favorite to take over for his late father, Trump dismissed him Thursday as a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” choice.

On Monday, Trump told The Post that Operation Epic Fury was “way ahead of schedule,” but didn’t rule out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary.”

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” he said at the time. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

While Trump told the Daily Mail on Sunday that he estimated the war would last “four weeks or so,” other officials have refused to put a precise timeline on the operation.

“We’ve only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday.

“More and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started. 

“We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran’s capabilities are evaporating by the hour, while American strength grows fiercer, smarter and utterly dominant.”