Trump Says Iran War Decision Is Coming ‘Soon’ After First Post-Midterm Security Meeting

President Donald Trump said Thursday he will soon decide whether to resume all-out war with Iran, keep strangling the regime economically, or cut a deal that includes major Iranian concessions.

The comments came after Trump met his top national security advisers on Iran for the first time since Election Day, as part of his weekly intelligence briefing, two U.S. officials told Axios.

“Now we will make a decision,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, Axios reported. “Do we want to go further” with strikes to ensure Iran’s nuclear program is dead “and that it will never happen again?”

“I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I will have to. You’ll know soon enough,” Trump said, according to Axios.

The midterms were widely treated inside the administration as an inflection point on whether to unleash a new bombing wave or pivot toward diplomacy after voters punished Republicans over gas prices tied to the conflict.

U.S. Central Command is finalizing preparations to potentially resume major combat operations in Iran, though it has not received a new directive from Washington, a U.S. official told Axios.

One signal of renewed strikes could be a third U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group arriving in the Middle East. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is due for a Singapore port call starting Friday and would not reach CENTCOM’s area before mid-November, Axios reported.

At the same time, Qatari mediators continued talks with Iran and the White House on a draft confidence-building plan. Under one outline described to Axios, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade and release some frozen Iranian funds on day one in exchange for an Iranian invitation for IAEA inspectors to bombed nuclear sites.

On day two, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen and nuclear talks would resume focused on Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, regional sources told the outlet.

Iranian Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday and said Tehran’s seven conditions must be met before the strait reopens or negotiations resume, Axios reported.

A companion Axios analysis said Trump faces mostly bad options: new strikes that could keep gas high and unpopular, a deal Iranians may harden after his political loss, or a prolonged “strangle” campaign of blockade and sanctions.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other advisers want more time for economic pressure, while the Pentagon continues contingency planning, according to that reporting.

Trump has said for weeks he would end the war one way or another after the election. With Democrats taking Congress and gas prices still elevated, the choice he telegraphs in the coming days will shape both the battlefield and the lame-duck political fight at home.

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