WASHINGTON (AP) — Twice on Monday, President Donald Trump said he'd wrangled a confession of sorts from an Oval Office predecessor who he said had expressed regret in a private conversation about not attacking Iran the way Trump has been doing for more than two weeks.
But there's just a little problem: Representatives for the four living former presidents — three Democrats and one Republican — said none have been in touch with Trump recently.
Trump declined to name the former president when reporters asked who it was, saying he didn't want to “embarrass him.”
The Republican president first told the story during extended remarks about the Iran war as he opened a meeting of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center. Trump is chairman of the board and held the meeting at the White House.
He repeated that Iran had been a threat to the United States for decades but said he is the only president who had the courage to do something about it.
“Look, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I’m doing, and they should have done it a long time ago," he said. "It would have been a lot easier. There’s no president that wanted to do it.
“And yet every president knew. I’ve spoken to a certain president, who I like, actually, a past president, a former president. He said, 'I wish I did it, I wish I did,’ but they didn’t do it. I’m doing it,” Trump continued.
Asked which former president he'd spoken to, Trump said: “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career, even though he’s got no career.”
Representatives for each of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden said they had not spoken with Trump recently. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the former presidents' private conversations.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment after being informed that none of the former presidents said he had spoken with Trump recently.
Trump and all four past presidents were last together in the same space for his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025 — well before the war.
He has been extremely critical of Biden and Obama, often saying Biden is the “worst president in the history of our country" and accusing Obama of negotiating a “horrible deal” with Iran over its nuclear weapons. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement the first time he was president.
But the Republican recently offered sympathetic comments about Clinton, saying it "bothers” him that the former president had been called to give a deposition to Congress about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I liked Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,” Trump said in a Feb. 4 interview with NBC News. “I liked his behavior toward me. I thought he got me, he understood me.”
Trump repeated his story about discussing Iran with a former president later Monday in the Oval Office, where he announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a task force that was created to eliminate fraud in federal benefit programs.
“Was it George W. Bush?” a reporter asked.
“No,” Trump said.
“Was it Bill Clinton?” the reporter asked.
Trump said: “I don’t want to say. I don’t want to say,” then added that “it's somebody that happens to like me. And I like that person, who's a smart person. But that person said, ‘I wish I did it,’ OK, but I don't want to get into who, OK. I don't want to get them into trouble.”
President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order regarding a task force on fraud in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan accused Pakistan of killing at least 400 people in an airstrike on a drug rehabilitation hospital in the Afghan capital late Monday. It marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that began late last month and has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.
Pakistan dismissed the accusation that it had hit a hospital, saying its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan, did not hit any civilian sites.
Afghanistan's deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat, in a post on X, said the airstrike had hit the hospital in Kabul at about 9 p.m. local time, destroying large sections of the 2,000-bed facility. He said the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported injured.
Local television stations posted footage on X showing security forces using flashlights as they carried out casualties while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building. Fitrat said rescue teams were working to control the fire and recover the bodies.
The strike came hours after Afghan officials said the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, killing four people in Afghanistan, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbors in years entered a third week.
Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike on X, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors.” In a post before the death toll rose into the hundreds, he said those killed and injured were patients at the hospital.
“We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he posted.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X in the early hours Tuesday that the Pakistani military had “carried out precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and the eastern province of Nangarhar. He said “technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities” at two locations in Kabul were destroyed.
“All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime to support its multiple terror proxies,” he wrote.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information said earlier that Mujahid’s claim was “false and misleading” and aimed at stirring sentiment and cover what it described as ”illegitimate support for cross-border terrorism.” It said Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted.”
The strike came hours after the U.N. Security Council called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to immediately step up efforts to combat terrorism. Pakistan accuses Kabul of harboring militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, which it says carry out attacks inside Pakistan.
The Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously, didn’t refer specifically to attacks carried out in Pakistan but condemns “in the strongest terms all terrorist activity including terrorist attacks.” The resolution also extends the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, for three months.
Pakistan’s government accuses Afghanistan of providing safe haven to the Pakistani Taliban, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, as well as to outlawed Baloch separatist groups and other militants who frequently target Pakistani security forces and civilians across the country. Kabul denies the charge.
The fighting — the most severe between the two neighbors — began in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan that Kabul said killed civilians. The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.
Pakistan has declared it is in “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
On Sunday, Tarar said the military has killed 684 Afghan Taliban forces, a claim rejected by Afghanistan, which says casualties are far lower. Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry and other officials have said Afghanistan has killed more than 100 Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said Afghanistan’s Taliban administration crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that injured several civilians in Pakistan last week.
Responding to those attacks, Pakistan’s air force over the weekend struck equipment storage sites and “technical support infrastructure” in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar Province, saying it was being used for attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul said Pakistan hit two locations, including an empty security site and a drug rehabilitation center that sustained minor damage.
In Kabul, Afghanistan’s administrative Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi said defending sovereignty is the duty of all citizens. Speaking during a meeting with political analysts and media figures, Hanafi expressed regret over civilian casualties in recent Pakistani attacks, saying the war was imposed on Afghanistan.
Ahmed reported from Islamabad and Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed.
People attend the funeral prayers of police officers, killed in the roadside bomb explosion, outskirts of Lakki Marwat, a district in northwest Pakistan, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/G.A. Marwat)
Residents inspect the site of a strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Barackatullah Popal)
Residents and Taliban police gather the remains of a projectile at the site of a strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Barackatullah Popal)
