US President Donald Trump has taken to social media calling for what appears to be the total surrender of the Iranian Government.

Trump returned from the G7 Summit in Canada 24 hours early and is presenting a much more muscular approach towards Iran, after urging Tehran’s population of almost 10 million people to evacuate the capital as he huddles with his national security team at the White House.

President Trump’s posture comes as the Pentagon continues to move military assets, including two massive aircraft carriers, into the region, for now, stating that the moves are defensive in nature.

The official words out of Washington is that the United States has not been involved in the offensive strikes on Iran.

In a series of posts on Truth Social, President Trump wrote that “we now have complete and total control of the skies in Iran”, followed by a post saying “we know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding” – a reference to the whereabouts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He further wrote that they were not going to take him out, at least for now and that they don’t want missiles shot at civilians, warning that their patience was wearing thin.

Sequence of posts from President Trump on Truth Social re Iran…

Appears to call for complete surrender by Iranian Govt

Says “we” have complete control of Iranian skies which suggests USA involvement.#sabcnews pic.twitter.com/hT2gRsKnEV

— Sherwin Bryce-Pease (@sherwiebp) June 17, 2025

As questions swirl around the goal of greater US involvement in the absence of peace talks, a principal analyst with the JANES open source intelligence company, Lewis Smart, says predicting Trump’s decisions is quite difficult.

“Predicting Trump’s foreign policy decisions is notoriously difficult. We can, I think, very more confidently say that the US will be needed to some extent to achieve a mission success in terms of significantly destroying or significantly setting back Iran’s nuclear program in the long term, or at least in the medium to long term. The US is likely needed in that regard, in terms of kinetic capabilities,” says Smart.

“The operations carried out so far have merely been warnings for deterrence, and a punitive operation will be executed soon. Seriously, a warning is issued to the residents of the occupied territories, especially Tel Aviv and Haifa, to leave these areas for their own safety and not to become victims of Netanyahu’s barbaric actions,” says Iran’s newly appointed military Chief of Staff, Abdolrahim Mousavi, also striking a strident posture after a number of the Iran’s military hierarchy already taken out by Israeli strikes.

Raising questions about how long Iran could respond militarily, Defence specialist Jeremy Binnie, also with JANES explains:  “It’s a numbers game. It’s how many ballistic missiles the Iranians have got versus how many interceptors the Israelis have got. And the Israelis can push those numbers in their favour by hitting the missile bases in Iran, hitting the launchers when they move out of the bases, etc., etc., and trying to suppress the Iranian offensive capability in Iran as well as intercept the missiles as they’re approaching Israel.”

The United Nations’ Secretary General’s Deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq says, “We are against any threats against the leaders of any of the UN member states, and we want to make sure that there are no actions taken towards escalation, including rhetorical. We want the conflict to end, not to be increased. So we certainly hope that all Member States are aware of the need to limit the scope of the conflict and bring it to an end.”

With speculation rife that if the US were to step in, it would be to deliver a bunker-buster bomb to penetrate a secretive FODOW uranium enrichment facility, which is built 80 to 90 meters beneath a mountain.

Two main options are likely being evaluated by the United States moving forward, either to pursue a deal with Iran as it relates to its nuclear programme and dramatic limits to the concentration of its uranium enrichment which has been flagged by the International Atomic Energy Agency or to deploy a bunker buster bomb to destroy the enrichment facility which only the United States military has the capacity to deliver.

VIDEO | Trump calls on Iran’s total surrender: