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WASHINGTON — President Trump had a one-word answer to whether he would resume attacks on Iran after the midterm elections.
“No,” Trump told journalists after a nearly hour-long appearance at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool where he made a final appeal to midterm voters.
The remark follows a steep drop in oil prices after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that “very intensive” peace talks are underway.
Trump’s definitive answer followed a phone interview with Axios earlier Monday in which he said, “One way or the other, we will do something, but there is no rush.”
Vice President JD Vance said Monday that “we’ve certainly made some progress” and that he and Trump both “feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement,” but said that Iranian leaders are “a little unpredictable.”
Trump used his speech at the Reflecting Pool to celebrate the massive one-day drop in oil prices as voters cast ballots in the congressional elections that will shape the remainder of his second term.
Spikes in oil and diesel prices and the ensuing uptick in inflation caused by the war have been major issues in the campaign.
Trump noted, however, that more petroleum is now flowing through the Strait of Hormuz than before the war started on Feb. 28, giving hope that the economic impact will ease.
“We had a war with Iran. We won,” he said in his remarks. “I don’t know if you even call it a war because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months, you know. We control the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Wall Street Journal reported we took out last week more oil than at any time in the history of the Strait, and again oil prices are plunging now. They’re plunging — a record. Nobody’s ever seen a plunge like this, and they’ll be down,” Trump added.
“I hope people realize that when they go into the voting booth because we had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
Later, Trump added, “We’re talking about war. It’s not a war. We’ve done very little fighting.”
He said he had agreed to ease up on targeting regime leaders and expressed optimism about talks.
“We wiped out their military and their air force, and we did everything we had to do — wiped out their leaders… and they’ve asked us, ‘Please stop doing that’, and we will,” he said.
“But it looks like that’s coming together very nicely.”
