President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday that Iran is deliberately dragging out its war with the United States until after the November midterm elections, claiming Tehran is betting on a Democratic-friendly Congress that would allow the Islamic Republic to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for a sold-out Republican National Committee midterm convention rally in Dallas, Trump was blunt about his read on Tehran’s strategy. “So, I think the war is going to end immediately after the election,” Trump said. “I think the war will end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer.”
Trump then laid out what he described as Iran’s political calculation. “They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon,” he said. “All they want is a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble.”
Trump on Iran:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 9, 2026
They are desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon.
All they want is a nuclear weapon. pic.twitter.com/uIPpzEAoem
The comments came the same day the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors voted 23-3, with eight abstentions, to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council for the first time in two decades, over uranium traces inspectors found at undeclared sites that Tehran has refused to explain. The resolution was put forward by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, and follows an earlier finding, in June, that Iran was not complying with its nonproliferation obligations. Iran, Russia and China opposed the measure, with the three countries arguing that the war has made normal IAEA inspections impossible and urging member states to reject it.
Wednesday’s remarks are consistent with a pattern the president has repeated for months: casting Iran as the desperate party in the conflict, even as independent assessments of the war have varied. In late March, Trump denied a report describing him as desperate to reach a deal with Iran, insisting instead that Tehran was “begging to make a deal.” “I’m the opposite of desperate, I don’t care,” he said at the time, adding that the U.S. still had “other targets we want to hit before we leave.”
The framing continued into June, when Trump told reporters a deal could be reached within “two or three days” and that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen “immediately” once an agreement was signed. A White House official at the time told CNBC that “Iran is desperate to make a deal because of the historic successes of Operation Epic Fury, Operation Economic Fury, and the blockade.” The deal did not materialize on that timeline.
By July, with the war stretching past the 100-day mark, Trump was again describing Iran as “getting decimated” and desperate to hold talks, according to reporting from NPR — a characterization Iran experts pushed back on, noting that the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was consolidating power rather than seeking an exit.
Not everyone has accepted the White House’s account of Iran’s position. John Bolton, who served as a national security adviser during Trump’s first term and has long favored military action against Iran, said in late July that the part of Tehran’s government that matters most — the IRGC — has “zero interest in a deal,” and questioned whether the administration has a coherent strategy at all.
Wednesday’s remarks also arrived a day after U.S. Central Command announced it had destroyed several Iranian crude oil tankers, part of an intensifying campaign against Tehran’s oil exports. Retired Gen. Charles Wald, the former deputy commander of U.S. European Command, told Fox News that Iran’s economy and military have been so degraded that the country is “hanging on by a thread,” and that Trump is “not going to give up” after the midterms.
The war began Feb. 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites under the operational name Operation Epic Fury. An initial ceasefire held for roughly two months before the conflict resumed amid disputes over access to the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints.
A memorandum of understanding signed by the U.S. and Iranian presidents on June 17 was intended to formally end the war within 60 days, but the agreement collapsed in July after Iran struck commercial vessels transiting the strait, prompting renewed U.S. retaliatory strikes.
Trump’s Wednesday remarks came as Republicans head into the midterms with control of Congress at stake, and as the war — now well past six months — shows no clear sign of a negotiated resolution. Democrats have not publicly responded to Trump’s characterization of the party as a “weak group” that would allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.