US President Donald Trump expressed doubt about renewed war with Iran, telling CNN it was “highly unlikely,” before a Monday meeting with Qatar’s prime minister, who is acting as mediator.
In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to restart strikes, and US media reports indicate that hostilities could resume following last Tuesday’s midterm elections.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, the president said renewed fighting was “highly unlikely” but cautioned that his decision “depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement.”
“I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don’t know how hard I hit them,” he said.
Trump is set to meet with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as the country’s foreign minister, at the White House on Monday.
This will be Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since a major midterm defeat in which his Republican Party lost control of Congress.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi indicated on Sunday that peace talks had been put on hold while the political consequences of the vote were being evaluated.
“For the past few days, there has been no more travel (by mediators), and the reason for this is the shock that the election results in the United States have caused to everyone,” Araghchi told state television.
“We now have to see how long it will take for them to digest these results in order to determine how we are going to move forward,” he added.
Trump has conceded that the deeply unpopular war with Iran, which started with US-Israeli strikes in late February, was at least partly to blame for the Republicans’ defeat.
Araghchi stated on Monday that the US president “clearly recognizes that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel.”
“Americans are evidently sick and tired of Israel bamboozling US administrations into forever wars,” Araghchi said on X. “They had enough. So has our region.”
In Sunday’s CNN interview, Trump again implied that the economic pressure bearing down on Iran will push its leaders to accept the United States’ terms.
“They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301 percent inflation,” Trump claimed.
“They’re withering away financially. We’ve hit them militarily. We could finish them off.”
According to Iran’s official figures, year-on-year inflation stood at almost 90 percent in September.
Iranian state television reported that the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz was attacked overnight Sunday, just hours after the official IRNA news agency said two explosions had occurred there.
A number of regional powers, among them Qatar and Pakistan, have spent months trying unsuccessfully to bring the war to a definitive end.
Direct fighting has mostly died down, yet Iran keeps pressing its effort to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which is vital to global energy supplies, while the US Navy maintains a counter blockade of Iranian ports.
