President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States may have to destroy the rest of Iran, as he weighs whether to resume strikes after meeting his national security team for the first time since the midterm elections.
Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office after two days of meetings at the White House on Wednesday and Thursday. He said a decision would come soon on whether to go further with military action to make sure the country’s nuclear programme could never be rebuilt.
“Now we will make a decision,” Trump said. “Do we want to go further” with strikes to ensure Iran’s nuclear programme is dead and that “it will never happen again?” He added: “I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I will have to. You’ll know soon enough.”
What Trump said about Iran in the Oval Office
The president said the United States was building more weapons than ever before and was ready if further action was ordered. “We’re building more weapons right now in our military than we’ve ever built before,” he said. “If we have to do the rest of the Iran thing, we’re very much locked and loaded.”
Trump said a neighbouring country had told him it would take the country 25 to 30 years to rebuild after the damage from the war. He put the figure at 25 years in his remarks to reporters. The war began in February, when the United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran, and it remains unresolved more than eight months later.
The tone was more restrained than his earlier warnings. Before the midterm elections, Trump had warned that American forces had yet to begin destroying what was left of the country, with energy infrastructure and bridges named as possible targets. On 8 October, he pledged that the United States would not attack Tehran at any time before the midterm elections on 3 November.
Days after the February strikes began, Tehran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that once carried about 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade. Oil prices fell to $93.82 a barrel on Thursday morning on expectations that the Republican losses would lower the chance of Trump renewing strikes.
Iran war options on the table
Senior United States officials told Fox News that Thursday’s meeting was the first between Trump and his top national security advisers on the country since the elections. The officials said his options include fresh strikes, continued economic pressure, or a deal involving large concessions from Tehran.
United States Central Command is completing preparations for a possible restart of large-scale military operations, according to a United States official, although it has not received a new order from Washington. The official said 9 November would bring a new moon in the Middle East, with little or no moonlight, a condition described as favourable for military operations.
Qatari mediators have passed a nuclear proposal from Tehran to the United States, according to reports. The proposal has not been described in public, and neither side has said whether it could form the basis of talks.
Reaction in Iran and the region
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that it would treat any nation that helped the United States with renewed strikes as a legitimate target. Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian said the joint United States and Israel war had failed to achieve its aims.
Iran has not said publicly how it would respond to a new round of strikes. Nabavian’s remarks were the latest from Tehran to argue that the war had not met Washington’s aims, while Trump has said the aim of any further action would be to make sure the nuclear programme could never be rebuilt.
Trump said Washington now controls “everything that we’ve wanted to control” in the country, and that Tehran cannot move ahead with its nuclear programme “without approval”. He did not say what further action he might take, or give a date for a decision.
The remarks followed a setback for Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress. Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that the war had pushed some potential Republican voters away, saying it had pushed petrol prices up. The war and the cost of living were the two issues Republican candidates heard about most from voters, according to the Guardian’s account of the post-election debate.