President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the war with Iran will end “immediately after” the November midterm elections, saying Tehran “can’t hold out any longer” as the United States intensifies military and economic pressure on the regime.
“I think the war is going to end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer,” Trump told reporters before departing for Dallas.
The president accused Iran of prolonging the war in an effort to influence the upcoming elections. “They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we could get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon,” he said.
Trump warned that Tehran’s ultimate objective remains obtaining a nuclear weapon, something he has repeatedly vowed the United States will not allow.
“All they want is a nuclear weapon,” he declared. “If they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world would be in deep trouble.”
The president also cited Iran’s deepening economic crisis in explaining why he believes Tehran cannot continue much longer, describing the country as “in shambles” amid soaring inflation and a collapsing currency.
Iran has come under mounting economic pressure from the U.S. naval blockade and sweeping sanctions campaign, which have sharply curtailed its oil exports and trade while cutting the regime off from critical sources of revenue and foreign currency.
Military pressure has intensified at the same time as Iran continues attempting to strike American forces and vessels around the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. forces destroyed five IRGC-linked crude oil carriers Tuesday after Iran twice targeted a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. CENTCOM identified the vessels as part of the shadow fleet used to fund the IRGC and its terrorist proxies.
Trump put the number of Iranian ships and tankers destroyed by the United States at roughly nine Wednesday and warned that the attacks are not finished.
“We knocked out nine of their ships,” Trump told reporters, warning, “You’re going to see a lot more.”
The president separately described many of Iran’s tankers as “gonzo.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced the warning Wednesday, saying Iran continues losing tankers each time it attempts to attack American naval vessels.
“They continue to fire on naval ships, and when they fire at our naval ships, they pay a price in tankers,” Rubio told reporters in Ecuador.
Rubio noted that the Iranian attacks had failed to hit American vessels while five Iranian tankers were struck Tuesday night — four damaged and one sunk.
“They’ll continue to pay a price for that,” he warned. “In the meantime, we’re going to continue to strangle them economically.”
The economic campaign Rubio described is increasingly being felt inside Iran, where officials have acknowledged the effect of the blockade and sanctions on the country’s ability to import goods and generate revenue.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recently acknowledged that imports and exports had fallen sharply as previously available trade routes were cut off.
“The route is now blocked, and goods are not coming in,” Pezeshkian conceded.
Trump warned last week that Iran was getting “weaker and weaker by the day,” questioning how much longer the regime could withstand the mounting pressure.
Asked Wednesday about the possibility of renewed negotiations, Trump said the United States is not seeking another agreement with Tehran but left open the possibility that talks could eventually resume.
“We’re not looking for it,” Trump responded. “A negotiation could possibly happen, but it’s not something we’re looking at.”
Trump made clear, however, that the terms of any future agreement would be considerably broader than those Washington previously sought from Tehran.
“I’m doing much more than a nuclear deal. There’s a lot more than nuclear,” he said, adding that “a lot of other things” would now be on the table that “wouldn’t have been on the table three months ago.”
Trump has repeatedly dismissed the prospect of another agreement in recent days. Last week, he called a potential deal with Iran something that “isn’t worth the paper it’s written on” and later declared that he “couldn’t care less” if Tehran signs what he described as a “worthless” agreement.
Tehran, meanwhile, laid out a series of sweeping demands Wednesday for ending the conflict, including an end to U.S. military operations and future threats, the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and guarantees against interference with its nuclear and missile programs.
An IRGC spokesman also demanded an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and an end to the blockade of Yemen.
The demands leave Washington and Tehran far apart as the United States continues its military campaign while tightening the economic pressure on a regime Trump says is rapidly running out of time.
For Trump, the November elections now represent the outer limit of how long he believes Tehran can sustain the confrontation.
“I think the war is going to end immediately after the election,” he said, “because they can’t hold out any longer.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.