Trump compares US strikes on Iran to Pearl Harbor during meeting with Japan’s PM

US President Donald Trump drew a parallel on Thursday between US strikes ​on Iran and Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, as he ‌defended the war he launched against Tehran while meeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington, Reuters writes.

“We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” Trump stated. “You believe in surprise, I ⁠think much more so than us.”

Takaichi’s eyes widened and she shifted in her ​chair as Trump, seated beside her in the Oval Office, evoked the moment ​that drew the US into World War Two.

The Japanese attack on the US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, killed 2,390 Americans. The US declared war ​on Japan the next day, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt calling it “a date ​which will live in infamy.”

The US defeated Japan in Aug. 1945, days after US atomic ‌bomb ⁠attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.