ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The US president said on Wednesday that the war with Iran may be nearing its end, highlighting Tehran’s keenness to conclude a deal with Washington. The remarks come shortly after Donald Trump predicted the conflict would end “immediately” after the November midterm elections, and amid reports that his administration is preparing to discuss a postwar strategy with Gulf Arab states.
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the war with Iran may be nearing its end, claiming that Tehran wants a deal with Washington. The remarks came shortly after Trump predicted the conflict would end "immediately" after the November midterm elections, and amid reports that his administration is preparing to discuss a postwar strategy with Gulf states.
“Hopefully we're toward the end of the war,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina. “Iran is very much wanting to make a deal. We'll see how that works out.”
Asked whether he had recently heard from senior Iranian officials, and whether contacts were direct or through intermediaries, Trump replied, “No, directly.”
The remarks come a week after Trump predicted that the war with Iran “is going to end immediately after the [midterm] elections ... because they can't hold out any longer,” adding that the Iranian leadership was "desperate to try and affect the election.”
On the prospect of renewed war-end talks with Tehran, Trump then noted that a negotiation "could possibly happen" but that Washington was not seeking one. “Originally, I wanted to make a deal,” he said, adding, “We're so far down the line; they have very little country left right now, so we're not looking for it.”
Trump's comments also come as American news website Axios reported on Wednesday that the US president is set to meet senior officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York next Tuesday.
Citing three sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Axios said the meeting is expected to address US proposals for a postwar strategy as Trump and his senior team work on a plan for the period after the conflict. The meeting could also expand to include other Arab and Muslim leaders, one of the sources added.
The development comes as tensions remain high in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical energy chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas supplies pass. The strategic waterway emerged as a flashpoint since the Iran war broke out in late February, when the US and Israel launched a joint air campaign that struck thousands of targets across the country over six weeks.
Tehran responded with drone and missile strikes across the Middle East, targeting what it said were US assets in Gulf Arab states and launching retaliatory strikes on Israel.
The warring sides reached a preliminary ceasefire in early April, followed in mid-June by the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which established a truce and opened a 60-day window to negotiate a final agreement. Despite the MoU, both sides have traded repeated rounds of strikes.
In Hormuz, a US naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in effect since mid-July, as Iran continues to claim sovereignty over the waterway and requires commercial vessels to seek its authorization for passage.
The latest incident in the Strait involved an attack on the Panama-flagged oil tanker ELGAIA, which was towed to an Omani port after a fire in its engine room was put out, Oman's Maritime Security Center said on Tuesday. Twenty-three crew members were evacuated and two remain missing.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the tanker caught fire after a naval mine went off as it passed through a “prohibited” area south of the waterway, claiming the vessel had ignored warnings to stay out.
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed and remains under our intelligent control,” the IRGC said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz remains conditional on Washington meeting Tehran's demands under the Islamabad MoU.
Against that backdrop, US Vice President JD Vance warned on Wednesday that a US withdrawal from the Middle East would trigger a global energy crisis as long as Iran keeps attacking commercial shipping.
“What I would say to anybody who’s frustrated right now is the alternative here is that the United States effectively says to the Middle East, ‘You’re on your own,’ would mean necessarily a worldwide energy crisis,” Vance said during an appearance at the All-In Summit.
“I think that wanting to keep the United States out of foreign entanglements does not mean that you can never use the military in order to accomplish the American people’s objectives,” he added, addressing critics of the Trump administration's military involvement in the Middle East.
