U.S. President Donald Trump says Iran may be unable to sustain the conflict beyond the November vote, while warning Tehran remains determined to pursue a nuclear weapon and influence the outcome of the U.S. election
U.S. President Donald Trump said the war with Iran will likely end after the midterm elections, which are scheduled to take place in two months and will determine which party controls Congress.
Trump made the forecast while speaking to reporters at Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews before departing for the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas. The midterm elections are scheduled for Nov. 3.
“I think the war is going to end immediately after the election,” Trump told reporters. “I think the war will end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer.”
Trump added that Iran is pursuing a strategy of holding out in an effort to influence the U.S. election and would resume attempts to produce a nuclear weapon.
“They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone, and let them have their nuclear weapon,” Trump said, referring to Tehran.
Saying that he is not interested in negotiations with Iran’s regime, Trump told reporters: “All they want is a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble.”
Over the summer, the United States and Iran held talks concerning Tehran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway through which significant amounts of the world’s oil are transported.
Renewed fighting between the two countries erupted last month over the strait, with American forces saying they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in a new round of strikes on Tuesday. In response, an Iranian military official warned that Tehran would escalate its attacks on U.S. assets in the region.
The war has been marked by a cycle of pauses followed by periodic flare-ups. Iran remains capable of launching missile and drone strikes against other Middle Eastern nations and threatening oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz despite U.S. attacks.
This is not the first time this week that Trump has made forecasts about the war with Iran.
On Monday, the U.S. president predicted that elevated gas prices would fall quickly once Iran is defeated by the United States. Trump wrote on Truth Social that prices would drop to $3 or possibly below $2 per gallon once that occurs, although he did not predict when that would happen.
Figures released by the American Automobile Association on Wednesday showed that regular gasoline averaged around $4.22 per gallon, up 7 cents from the previous day. Diesel prices, which have been affected by Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities in recent weeks, rose 4 cents to an all-time high of $5.94 per gallon.
The new U.S. strikes and Trump’s prediction also came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Wednesday that Iran’s regime is “very close” to being toppled.
Speaking from Mount Hermon in Syria, Netanyahu said that “there is still work to do: The main task is to defeat the terrorist regime in Iran. We are very close to it.”
“We know that the entire axis will ultimately fall. We are committed to doing this, and we will do it,” he said, according to an English translation provided by his office.
“That’s going to hurt regular people more than they’ll benefit.”
