Iran is ‘defeated,’ Trump says, predicting conflict will end ‘very quickly’

President Trump declares Iran has been “defeated,” says US is working to prevent “one of the worst tragedies ever.”

By World Israel News Staff

President Donald Trump declared Iran “defeated” and predicted that the months-long war will soon come to an end, insisting Tehran will never be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon as diplomatic efforts to revive a ceasefire remain deadlocked.

Speaking Monday at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump portrayed the conflict as nearing its conclusion and argued that the economic costs borne by Americans were justified by the need to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.

“We’re saving the world from what could be one of the worst tragedies ever,” Trump told supporters, adding that Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump also predicted that energy prices, which have surged amid disruptions caused by the war, would fall rapidly once the fighting ends.

“The war will end very quickly, and prices are going to come down very sharply,” he said.

In a separate interview with News Channel Nebraska before the rally, Trump went further, saying Iran’s military position had already collapsed.

“They’re defeated. They will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, arguing that higher fuel costs were “a relatively small price to pay” to keep nuclear arms out of Tehran’s hands.

The remarks came as Trump seeks to reassure voters over soaring energy prices less than a month before the November 3 midterm elections, in which Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress.

Diesel prices have become an especially potent political issue in agricultural states such as Nebraska, where farmers and truckers have faced sharply higher operating costs. Trump signed an executive order during Monday’s rally expanding access to tax-exempt red-dyed diesel in an effort to provide temporary relief.

The president has repeatedly linked the spike in fuel prices to the Iran war and predicted that prices will fall dramatically once hostilities cease.

But despite Trump’s increasingly confident rhetoric, negotiations aimed at ending the conflict have shown little sign of producing an immediate agreement.

Iran last week submitted a proposal under which the United States would lift its blockade of Iranian ports while Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days. The strategically critical waterway, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil historically passed, has remained severely disrupted by the fighting.

Trump publicly said he rejected the Iranian proposal, although Tehran initially maintained that it had not received a formal rejection.

Iran subsequently announced that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had received an American response through Qatari mediators.

The two sides held indirect talks in New York last week, with Qatar shuttling messages between American and Iranian officials. Those contacts marked the first proximity negotiations since an earlier ceasefire reached in June collapsed within weeks.

Officials familiar with the latest talks have indicated that Washington and Tehran remain divided not necessarily over every element of a possible agreement but over the sequence in which concessions would be implemented.

Other accounts of the negotiations have been considerably more pessimistic, with officials describing both sides as increasingly entrenched and warning that renewed large-scale combat could be more likely than a diplomatic breakthrough.

Trump has nevertheless maintained publicly that Iran will ultimately capitulate.

“I don’t know if they are going to give up yet but they’ll give up,” he said last week. “They are doing very poorly.”

Iranian officials have rejected that characterization.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, accused Trump of being unable to choose between diplomacy and renewed escalation, while Tehran has continued insisting that any settlement must address sanctions, the US blockade and control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The war, which began in late February and has now stretched into its eighth month, has sharply weakened Iran militarily while also disrupting energy markets across the world.

The United States has maintained that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons remains the overriding objective of the campaign.

Trump reiterated that point in Nebraska, saying the question had already been settled as far as Washington was concerned.

“They will not have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “And it’s gonna happen very soon.”