President Trump says the war with Iran is “very close to over” as both sides consider another round of talks for a lasting peace.
“I think it’s close to over, yeah. I view it as very close to over,” Mr. Trump told Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria” in a clip posted Wednesday.
The U.S. and Israel have pounded Iran for six weeks in an attempt to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Mr. Trump also wants to constrain Iran’s missile program and its ability to fund terror proxies in the region.
Both sides are operating under a two-week ceasefire that expires on Tuesday, heaping pressure on negotiators to restart talks in Pakistan.
“If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we’re not finished,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.”
Mr. Trump imposed a blockade on maritime traffic to and from Iran to squeeze its leaders, economically, and punish it for restricting oil traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
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The economic fallout from the war affects every corner of the globe. Asian and European leaders are bemoaning high oil prices and energy supply shortfalls and want to see an end to the conflict.
Mr. Trump said he had no choice but to attack Iran.
“I had to divert because if I didn’t do that, right now, you’d have Iran with a nuclear weapon,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “And if they had a nuclear weapon, you’d be calling everybody over there ’sir,’ and you don’t want to do that.”
The president said the economic pain from the war would be short-lived and worth it.
The price of oil, he said, is “going to come dropping down very big as soon as this is over.”
The national average price of a gallon of gas stood at $4.10 on Wednesday, up from around $3 at the start of the war.
“When [the war is] settled, gas prices are going to go down tremendously.” Mr. Trump said, predicting they would be low again by the midterm elections.
Mr. Trump taped the interview with Ms. Bartiromo on Tuesday before its release on Wednesday.
The president said Chinese President Xi Jinping personally denied a report that Beijing was supplying weapons to Iran, a strategic partner to China.
“I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that, and he wrote me a letter saying that, essentially, he’s not doing that,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump also repeated his threat to cause widespread devastation to Iran’s infrastructure but said he did not want to resort to that.
“We could take out every one of their bridges in one hour. We could take out every one of their power plants in one hour,” he said. “We don’t want to do that.”
