Trump answers one word on striking Iran after the midterms: no

The question was shouted as Trump left the Reflecting Pool on Monday afternoon, and the answer was one word. Asked whether he was considering striking Iran after the midterms, the president said, “No.” Reuters reported the exchange the same day. It was a different note from the one Trump struck over the weekend, when he said the United States would at some point have to give Iran the hammer, and a different note from the one coming out of Jerusalem, where Netanyahu spent a Saturday phone call urging him to resume strikes immediately after the vote.

Trump filled in the reasoning around the answer. He said he believed Iran wanted to make a deal and that such an agreement could happen. “We're not going to allow Iran ever to have a nuclear weapon, and they understand that,” he said. In a phone interview with Axios the same day he kept the door open without setting a date: “One way or the other, we will do something, but there is no rush.” Speaking to Israel's Channel 12, he said American pressure was paralyzing Iran's economy, that Tehran's leaders had no money and no fuel, and that the talks were progressing well, while adding that Washington was not sure who was making the decisions in Tehran. The channel reported his advisers are split three ways, between a deal, a resumed war, and a third course urged by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of holding the blockade and sanctions in place for weeks or months.

Vance backed the diplomatic read in public. There had been “a number of good conversations with the Iranians,” he said, and he and the president feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement, while Iranian leaders remain, in his words, a little unpredictable.

In his Reflecting Pool speech Trump treated the war as already won. “We had a war with Iran. We won,” he said. “I don't know if you even call it a war because we haven't been doing any fighting for months. We control the Strait of Hormuz.” He told voters more petroleum is now moving through the strait than before the war began on February 28, and he credited the prospect of a settlement for the day's sharp fall in oil prices, a fall of nearly 10 dollars a barrel by his account.

Tehran's public position did not move. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday that Iran was ready for both diplomacy and military action more than ever before. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the indirect exchanges through Qatari and Pakistani mediators are continuing and still rest on Iran's seven step proposal, now condensed so it could be carried out within two days: Washington ends its naval blockade of Iranian ports and grants a waiver on Iranian oil sales, and Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. Reports from Jerusalem said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has given his diplomats added powers to reach a settlement. Iranian sources told Reuters, for their part, that they still believed a new American attack was more likely than a deal. Both capitals are talking about the same negotiation and describing opposite expectations of how it ends.