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U.S. President Donald Trump said he is "not looking to" escalate the war with Iran after his Republican Party’s midterm election defeat, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks with Tehran were not close to a breakthrough.
"Well, I’m not looking to. I don’t think there’s any reason to," Trump said in a sit-down interview with Ross Douthat aired by CBS News, his first since the Nov. 3 elections, when asked whether he would escalate the war now that the midterms are over.
"They have nothing. It’s buried under thousands of tons of rock," Trump said of Iran’s nuclear material, adding that U.S. surveillance from space can see "the color of the red dots on your tie."
Trump said "there’s been very little activity" at Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site.
"If we needed to do Pickaxe, which we don’t at this moment, we would have that done in one hour," he said.
He said Iran had been close to a deal before the vote.
"If we didn’t have this election, within the next few days we woulda had a deal," Trump said, adding that the election "gives them a little bit of a hope certificate."
Trump insisted "the strait is open," citing a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that more oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz than at the start of the war. Asked about the cost of U.S. naval escorts, he said: "Those countries that we’ve protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war, without us, they wouldn’t exist. Without us, Israel wouldn’t exist."
Trump said voters "didn’t like the war" and "didn’t like the fact that gasoline went up." "And there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel. There seems to be a dislike for Israel," he said.
He agreed with Vice President JD Vance's view that the war cost Republicans, but said he would do it again.
"My answer is an emphatic yes because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not," he said.
Trump also expressed confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. "Look, we’ve won two wars," he said, referring to Venezuela and Iran.
"POTUS clearly recognizes that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel. Strikingly, he seems confused about why that’s the case," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.
"Americans are evidently sick and tired of Israel bamboozling U.S. administrations into Forever Wars. They had enough. So has our region," he added.
In a separate phone interview with CNN, Trump repeated five times that renewed strikes were "highly unlikely "if negotiations progress. "It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement," he said.
"I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard," Trump noted.
"We’re ready for it. I’ve got three aircraft carriers here. They’re fully locked and loaded," Trump told CNN, adding that the U.S. has 38 bridges in its sights "that we can knock down in literally one hour," though he would prefer not to.
He claimed Iran retains about 10% of its missile capacity and 15% of its drone capability.
"We won that in Iran, it’s just a question of closing it out now or later," Trump told reporters in Florida. "Some of their neighbors would prefer that we just keep it the way it is."
"You have a number of countries that continue to engage them with different ideas, but I wouldn’t say we’re on the verge of a breakthrough," Rubio said before leaving for a G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Paris.
Iranian demands are "simply not just unacceptable, but in some cases outrageous and ridiculous and really unrealistic," he said.
"If there’s a clear and present threat to shipping or to our forces in the region, we have a right to defend ourselves," Rubio added.
Araghchi told IRNA that "there has been no activity or movement from the mediators" since the U.S. elections.
He spoke last week with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Türkiye, Greek Cyprus and Qatar.
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