At Arlington, Trump Honors Four Veterans, Defends the Iran War and Says His Arch Will Be Dedicated to the Military

President Trump marked Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday with a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a tribute to four American veterans by name and a forceful defense of the war with Iran, according to accounts of the ceremony.

Trump laid the wreath and stood for a moment of silence before speaking in the Memorial Amphitheater, The Epoch Times reported, on the 108th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting in World War I. First lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were among those in attendance.

The president told the crowd that the nation owes its veterans the same devotion they gave the country, The Epoch Times reported. He then singled out four men, according to The Independent: Jack Myers, a 103-year-old World War II veteran of the Battle of the Bulge; Col. Douglas Moore, a Vietnam medevac pilot who flew 1,874 missions and evacuated 2,782 wounded troops; Green Beret Ryan Hendrickson, a Silver Star recipient who has endured 27 surgeries; and Marine Dale Garner, who survived the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

Vance, a Marine veteran, pledged that the country would never leave its veterans behind, and Collins said the Department of Veterans Affairs has opened 47 new facilities since 2025, The Epoch Times reported.

Trump used much of his address to defend the war with Iran. He argued that Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, pointing to the Beirut bombing that killed 241 Americans, and told the crowd, "America did not start a war with Iran," Fox News reported. He said the conflict, which began with U.S. strikes on Feb. 28, has involved only a few weeks of active fighting and will end soon.

The Independent reported that Trump said the United States has already won and that the only question is when to end it, and that he claimed Iran would need 25 years to rebuild. He contrasted the operation with the long wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said cost many lives and returned very little, and with January's operation against Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, which he said was won in 48 minutes.

Critics objected to the setting. The Independent cast the remarks as a political speech on a solemn day and pointed to an AP survey of Election Day voters in which about six in 10 said using force against Iran was the wrong call. The speech came eight days after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said further strikes may not be needed if economic pressure on Tehran works, Fox News reported.

Trump also said the 250-foot triumphal arch he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington will be dedicated to veterans and the military soon, the Associated Press reported. The design, presented on a White House website as the United States Military Triumphal Arch, would rise on a traffic circle across the Potomac River. The White House has not given a price, and some estimates run as high as $100 million, according to the AP.

The project faces stiff legal headwinds. Judge Tanya Chutkan last week issued a 14-day order halting work, CBS News reported. The District of Columbia, Virginia, three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian are suing to stop the arch, and on Tuesday nine members of the Kennedy family filed to join the case, arguing it would block the view of President John F. Kennedy's eternal flame and cast shadows across family graves, ABC News reported. A White House spokesman told CBS the administration is confident it will be vindicated as the case proceeds.

For all the noise around it, the heart of Wednesday's ceremony belonged where it should: with a 103-year-old who held the line at the Bulge, a pilot who carried thousands of wounded men to safety, a Green Beret who has fought his way through 27 operations and a Marine who survived Beirut.

Americans will keep arguing about the Iran war, and the new Democratic majorities arriving in January will make sure that debate gets louder. A federal judge will decide whether the arch rises. But the honor owed to men like Myers, Moore, Hendrickson and Garner should never be up for debate, and on Veterans Day the president put their names before the nation. That is exactly where they belong.

What comes next: the court fight over the arch resumes when the temporary order runs out, and the president's Iran policy will face its first test under a Democratic Congress in the new year.