President Trump this weekend mused in an interview with Axios that so many people and officials are currently gathered for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's funeral in Tehran that they could all be taken out in one fell swoop.
"They are all there. One shot [and we can take them all out], but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with," Trump said.
He again emphasized that the Iranians "are begging to make a deal" but said both sides decided to take a week off from the conflict as well as talks to give time for Khamenei's funeral events to end. There are major public events scheduled to go for up to a week.
Trump acknowledged that neither side will shoot at the other as the funeral procession and multi-city observances continued. Predictions in international press accounts have said events are expected to attract some 30 million mourners.
The first and second days of public funeral ceremonies in Tehran attracted millions of people, after Friday saw top representatives from at least 70 foreign governments pay last respects.
Amid the scenes of public mourning, and also with some Iranian officials loudly calling for 'revenge' - Trump made this interesting comment to Axios:
He added that he was surprised to see some Iranians crying at the funeral, saying he thought people hated Khamenei. "Maybe it's fake tears," Trump mused.
Footage and images of massive crowds of people packing out central Tehran squares and roads have flooded social media over the weekend. External critics and enemies of Iran have been claiming that millions of people were 'forced' by Iran's security services to attend the funeral.
Al Jazeera's correspondent in Iran has described the following in a Sunday report:
Thousands and thousands of people are streaming through to pay their respects on the second day of the public farewell ceremony for the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
We know that tomorrow, in the capital of Tehran, there will be a funeral procession, and we are expecting millions of people to attend.
Also on the schedule, the bodies of Khamenei and his slain family members are also going to be taken to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq.
Khamenei and his family members are later to be buried in the city of Mashhad, which is his birthplace. His surviving son, Mojtaba Khamenei - the current supreme leader - is still in hiding and has yet been seen at the funeral.
Reports say the Iranians are fearful that US and Israeli intelligence, or their potential spy assets on the ground, could track Mojtaba's movements if he were to make public appearance at his father's funeral.
As for Trump expressing 'surprise' that millions of Iranians would mourn the late Khamenei, this seems but the latest admissions (in a long familiar pattern) of Washington getting pretty much every key assumption wrong about Middle East states and cultures it seeks to do regime change it.
This also hearkens back to US claims in Iraq that they "would greet us as liberators"... the same sentiment was at times expressed just ahead of the Feb. 28 US-Israeli attack on Iran. But a mass uprising strong enough to topple the government never materialized - though the US and Israel tried to encourage this.