Trump compares Pearl Harbour to the US surprise attack on Iran

President Donald Trump drew a parallel on Thursday between U.S. 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.



"We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?" Trump replied when a journalist asked why he had not told allies about his war plans.



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 U.S. into World War Two.



The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, killed 2,390 Americans.



The U.S. declared war on Japan the next day, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt calling it "a date which will live in infamy."



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



Trump's remarks received a mixed reaction on the streets of Tokyo on Friday.