Trump says the U.S. doesn’t ‘need’ a deal with Iran

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. doesn’t need a deal with Iran despite repeatedly stating in the run-up to the midterm elections that one could be reached. “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!” he wrote in a Truth Social post, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said in the post that he asked Vice President JD Vance to focus not on diplomatic talks with Iran, but on alleged “crime and corruption” in “Democrat run Cities and States.”

Days before the election, Vance had reached out to hard-liner Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in a bid to restart talks, The Wall Street Journal had reported. Vance, a potential 2028 presidential contender, had said a day after GOP losses in last week’s midterm elections that voter anger over the Iran war was the “real reason” for the party’s rout. It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the president’s notable shift, as he had suggested numerous times before the election that the U.S. could reach an agreement to resolve the conflict with Iran in the near future.

On the eve of the election, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Oil Prices are DROPPING LIKE A ROCK, down almost $10 a Barrel, A RECORD, because people feel that there will not be a War with Iran. Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen!” Trump’s post comes two days after he predicted at an impromptu White House news conference that the war is “going to be ending fairly soon.” He had met with the Qatari prime minister in the Oval Office Monday and wrote in a Truth Social post afterward that “Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others, would prefer the status quo, in other words, a continuation of the Greatest Naval Blockade in History.”

He added: “Should there be any change with respect to developments in the Middle East, the United States of America is ‘locked and loaded’ and ready to go. At this point, however, that seems to be quite unlikely. Israel, and the entire Middle East, are protected from Iranian danger and threats. We are seeing positive momentum toward an end to this Conflict, and will ensure that America’s interests are at all times protected.” Hours later, Trump made a rare call into C-SPAN, and when asked how much longer the war with Iran could last, he said, “We could knock it out fast, or we could knock it out over a short, not a long period of time.”

The president had said at the United Nations General Assembly in September that Iran was likely waiting to see the outcome of the midterm elections to make a deal. “I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election because it doesn’t make sense for them not to,” Trump said. “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.” NBC News reported last week that some of Trump’s advisers have told him that the window for restarting major combat operations in Iran was closing and that he should act before Democrats retake control of Congress in January, according to two U.S. officials.

That timeline would require him to make a decision on Iran within weeks.