President Donald Trump said Thursday he is approaching a “big decision” over whether to resume large-scale U.S. strikes against Iran in an effort to bring the nearly seven-month conflict to an end, ahead of talks with Gulf leaders that could help shape Washington’s next move.
“I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me,” Trump told Axios.
The president is expected Tuesday to meet leaders or senior officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, with the next phase of the conflict expected to figure prominently in the talks.
“I want to find out where they are and how they are doing. We have been very protective of them,” Trump said.
The Gulf states have a direct stake in whether Washington resumes major combat operations. Iran has repeatedly targeted countries across the region, striking U.S. bases and other military and civilian infrastructure, while Tehran has continued threatening retaliation against regional governments that support American operations. Saudi Arabia is also facing an escalating campaign of missile and drone attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
The threat of another Iranian response has already weighed on Trump’s calculations. In early August, he held off on resuming major attacks after Saudi Arabia and Qatar raised concerns that Tehran could retaliate against Gulf oil and gas infrastructure, Axios reported.
While holding off on another major offensive, Washington has continued intensifying its campaign to economically isolate Tehran through a widening sanctions campaign and a naval blockade aimed at cutting off the regime’s remaining sources of revenue.
Trump’s approaching decision follows increasingly explicit predictions that Iran cannot sustain the conflict much longer and is looking for a way out.
Last week, Trump predicted the conflict would end “immediately after” the midterm elections because Iran “can’t hold out any longer,” while making clear that the terms of any future agreement would extend considerably beyond the nuclear restrictions at the center of earlier negotiations.
“I’m doing much more than a nuclear deal. There’s a lot more than nuclear,” Trump said, explaining that issues not contemplated in earlier negotiations were now on the table.
Trump went further Wednesday, saying he is hopeful the conflict is approaching its end and confirming that Tehran had communicated with Washington directly.
“Hopefully we’re toward the end of the war,” Trump told reporters. “They want to make a deal. We’ll see how that works out.”
Asked whether the contact was taking place through intermediaries, Trump responded: “We deal directly.”
Later Wednesday, during a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, Trump said Iran “can’t go on” and predicted the conflict would “end soon,” while leaving open whether a conclusion could come before or after the midterms.
“You watch what’s gonna happen to Iran,” Trump said. “It’s gonna be a really good conclusion.”
As Trump considers how to proceed, the United States is maintaining the military presence needed to resume large-scale operations if he orders them.
Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have instructed the military to maintain its current force levels in the Middle East through the end of the year, keeping U.S. forces prepared for a potential return to full-scale combat, U.S. officials told Axios.
But officials said the military cannot remain at its current posture indefinitely without greater clarity over Washington’s ultimate objective.
“At some point you have to decide what is the end game,” one U.S. official said.
The administration has meanwhile continued squeezing Tehran through its naval blockade and expanding economic pressure campaign, while using military force to enforce restrictions on Iranian maritime trade and protect commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump pointed Thursday to the blockade as evidence of the pressure already being brought to bear on the regime.
“Not one ship has gone to Iran since we started. They tried, and we blew them up,” he told the outlet.
U.S. forces have also steadily expanded commercial movement through the Strait of Hormuz after clearing mines from its internationally recognized primary shipping lanes. CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said Wednesday that the military has helped commercial vessels move more than 900 million barrels of crude through the waterway since early May.
“The strait is open. Those lanes are open. And that is why commercial vessels continue to flow through them,” Hawkins said.
Trump also told the outlet that Iran remains in direct contact with the United States and still wants an agreement, reinforcing his comments Wednesday that Tehran had approached Washington directly.
Tehran has continued publicly signaling openness to negotiations while demanding terms Washington has shown no willingness to accept. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said Iran is prepared for dialogue but has demanded sanctions relief and rejected negotiations conducted under military pressure. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council, has taken a harder public line, declaring there would be “no talks until Iran’s conditions are met.”
The deliberations are unfolding as the White House develops a broader strategy for the region after the conflict, centered on containing Iran, strengthening cooperation among U.S. allies and expanding normalization between Israel and its neighbors, according to the report.
Trump will head into Tuesday’s meeting with Gulf leaders having left open how far Washington is prepared to go next — the “big decision” he says is approaching.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.