United States President Donald Trump has offered his latest prediction for concluding the war in Iran, indicating that an end date could come after the upcoming US midterm elections. “This war will end immediately after our election,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Dallas, Texas. Trump claimed the Iranian government was stalling an end to the war in order to secure a more favourable political environment in the US. The Democratic Party is angling to take control of one or both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterms. Currently, Trump’s Republican Party maintains slim majorities in both. “They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there,” Trump said of Iran’s strategy for the legislative elections.
He suggested that Iran is counting on Democrats to “leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon”. “All they want is a nuclear weapon, and if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble,” Trump said of Iran. When the war against Iran began on February 28, the country’s nuclear programme was a key justification that the US and Israel cited for launching hostilities. Trump and his officials claimed that Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the US and its allies. Iran, however, has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon, instead arguing its uranium enrichment is for civilian power purposes only.
US intelligence reports have also cast doubt on whether Iran was building a nuclear weapon, though concerns have been raised over its levels of enrichment. Negotiations about Iran’s nuclear energy programme were ongoing at the time of the war’s launch, and the issue has repeatedly cropped up in ceasefire negotiations in the six months since. Trump had previously withdrawn from a 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that would have restricted the amount of uranium Iran was allowed to enrich. When asked on Wednesday whether the US would restart talks with Iranians on a nuclear agreement, the president suggested his ambitions were larger. “I’m doing much more than a nuclear deal.
There’s a lot more than nuclear,” Trump said. But he also indicated that negotiations with Iran were not a top priority for the US government. “We’re not looking for it, to be honest,” Trump said. “Originally, I wanted to make a deal. We’re so far down the line. They have very little country left right now.” Trump’s comments follow remarks from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who told ABC News on Sunday “there may not” be a nuclear deal.
Wright suggested instead that the US may continue to launch strikes to weaken Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The US already carried out targeted strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025. Trump at the time said those strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme. Negotiations with Iran have floundered in recent months, and the Trump administration has continued to downplay the conflict ahead of the midterm elections.
The war is widely unpopular in the US. A poll last month found that only 31 percent of Americans support the conflict, down from 37 percent in March. On Wednesday, oil prices rose above $100 a barrel amid renewed US-Iran hostilities, threatening to further increase costs for consumers around the world. The US military said it struck five Iranian tankers on Tuesday in response to attempted missile attacks on a US Navy warship.
On Wednesday, Trump said more US strikes would follow: “You’re going to see a lot more.”
