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U.S. President Donald Trump stated on Friday that American warships are being reloaded with "the best ammunition ever made" in preparation for renewed strikes on Iran if peace talks in Islamabad fail.
He also declared the Strait of Hormuz will open "with or without" Tehran's cooperation and set no nuclear weapons as the single overriding condition for any deal, as the U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance touched down in Pakistan for the first direct U.S.-Iran talks since the war began.
Trump told the New York Post on Friday that U.S. warships were being restocked in preparation for a possible return to hostilities.
"We have a reset going. We're loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made, even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart. And if we don't have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively," Trump said.
He said the U.S. would know within 24 hours whether the talks would produce results.
"We're going to find out in about 24 hours. We're going to know soon," he said.
"You're dealing against people that we don't know whether or not they tell the truth. To our face, they're getting rid of all nuclear weapons; everything's gone. And then they go out to the press and say, 'No, we'd like to enrich.' So we'll find out," Trump added.
Trump dismissed the notion of contingency planning if talks collapse, citing the damage already inflicted on Iran's military.
"You don't need a backup plan. The military is defeated. Their military is gone. We've degraded just about everything. They have very few missiles. They have very little manufacturing capability. We've hit them hard," Trump told reporters as he prepared to depart for Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump vowed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen regardless of whether Iran cooperated, saying he would not allow Tehran to charge tolls on the international waterway.
"We're going to open up the Gulf, with or without them, or the strait, as they call it. I think it's going to go pretty quickly. And if it doesn't, we'll be able to finish it off one way or the other," Trump told reporters.
"The strait will open up automatically. We don't use the strait, other countries use the strait. Other countries will help out," he added.
He said the U.S. would not allow Iran to toll ships transiting the waterway. "It's international water. If they're doing that, nobody knows if they're doing that, but if they're doing that, we're not going to let that happen," he said.
When asked what a successful deal would look like, Trump was direct.
"No nuclear weapon, number one. I think it's already been regime change, but we never had that as a criterion. No nuclear weapon, that's 99% of it," Trump stated.
Trump continued to post on Truth Social as Vance flew to Islamabad.
"The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short-term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!" he wrote.
He also posted that Iranians are better at public relations "than they are at fighting."
The plane carrying the U.S. delegation, led by Vance and including Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, touched down in Islamabad, sources told Reuters.
About 100 members of an advanced U.S. team were already in the city, a Pakistani source told Reuters.
The Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, had arrived earlier.
Trump wished Vance luck ahead of his departure. "We'll see how it turns out. It's JD and Steve and Jared. We have a good team, and they meet tomorrow. We'll see how it all works out," Trump said on the tarmac before boarding Air Force One.
Asked whether Saturday's talks would be the sole opportunity to end the war, Trump said: "I don't know, I can't tell you. I have to see what happens tomorrow."
Pakistan, alongside Türkiye, China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, secured the two-week ceasefire earlier this week that brought both sides to Islamabad, following more than 40 days of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian retaliatory attacks across the region.
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