“It’s going to get wrapped up soon.” President Donald Trump said it Friday on Kansas City radio station KCMO, four days before Tuesday’s midterm elections, and then said nothing about how.
He gave one condition. “We need a guarantee there’ll never be a nuclear weapon,” he said. No timetable, no outline of a deal. Trump has already said Washington will not strike Iran before voters go to the polls, and the war, now in its seventh month, has become an issue on the campaign trail.
Money, Venezuela and “big trouble”
Earlier in the Oval Office, a reporter pressed him on the talks. “They want to talk,” Trump said, but Iran’s government was not paying its soldiers or its police. “They’re in big trouble, and we have time.”
Critics say the campaign is burning cash. Trump disagreed. “Every dollar we spent in Iran, we got back many times over through what we did in Venezuela,” he said, and called this “a war, but it’s not a typical war.” He named no figures.
Two versions of the Strait
Adm. Brad Cooper, who runs U.S. Central Command, posted a video after flying over the Strait of Hormuz. What he did not see, he said, was the Revolutionary Guard. Iran’s navy, in his words, is “at the bottom of the sea.” He counted “dozens of commercial vessels transiting. All types. Cargo, crude oil, liquid natural gas.” After a large clearing operation, he said, the main shipping lanes are free of mines.
Cooper said U.S. forces have helped Gulf states ship out more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude since summer, while the American blockade keeps Iranian oil off the water. Oil shipments through a protected southern route have climbed back to pre-war levels.
Tehran tells it differently. The Revolutionary Guard said a supertanker carrying more than 2 million barrels hit a mine and burned on what Iran calls an unauthorized route. Iranian state media counted it as the fourth tanker to explode that day, and the Guard said three more had caught fire after striking mines. It also claimed to have shot down an enemy drone east of the strait. None of this could be independently verified.
Some of the damage is easier to confirm. Oman said it pulled 25 crew off a Panama-flagged tanker that was attacked 1.6 nautical miles off Musandam Governorate. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center reported a vessel hit by an “unknown projectile” south of Lavan Island. Its crew was safe.
Doha’s envoys in Tehran
Qatari mediators landed in Tehran on Friday, working with Washington’s knowledge. They carry a draft ending the war, first put to Iran on Sunday. A senior Iranian official rejected it as unacceptable.
The sticking point is order. Washington wants the nuclear program on the table from the first session. Tehran wants the port blockade lifted and oil sanctions dropped before anything else moves.
Vice President JD Vance has also written to Mohsen Rezaei, a senior Iranian figure, through Qatari channels. Trump told reporters the letter was only about getting medical equipment into Iran. Iranian media said Tehran had not answered. Earlier in the week, officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkike, members of the Makkah defense alliance, flew to Tehran for their own talks.
Avengers on the Lake Worth Lagoon
In Florida, two Avenger air defense systems now sit on a floating barge in the Lake Worth Lagoon, off the western edge of Mar-a-Lago. Another set stands near Trump International Airport in West Palm Beach, close to where Air Force One parks. Humvee-mounted and short-range, they are built for aircraft, drones and low flyers. Ballistic missiles are beyond them.
The Secret Service called it “another layer of security.” NORAD and U.S. Northern Command said the Secret Service asked for the deployment and would not name a threat. NORAD says it has intercepted more than 60 aircraft near the property since January 2025, the latest on October 24, when an F-16 turned back a plane that had strayed into restricted airspace.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Cooper met Trump at the White House on Thursday to walk him through military options, and that planning for a post-election offensive is under discussion.
Sources
- Donald Trump says US in no rush for Iran deal, defends actions in Iran, Venezuela | The Jerusalem Post
- Trump says Iran war will end soon, US military insists Hormuz is secure
- Trump: Iran War Will 'Get Wrapped Up Soon'
- Iran War Updates: Trump says war "going to end soon" as Qatar pushes for a U.S.-Iran deal
- Trump On War With Iran: ‘It’s Going To Get Wrapped Up Soon’
Photo: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC (Public domain)
