Trump says US will leave Iran within 2 to 3 weeks

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he foresaw the United States ending the war on Iran within two to three weeks, suggesting the U.S. had largely accomplished its military goals and would leave it to other nations to resolve issues with the Strait of Hormuz.

“I would say that within two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe three,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Tuesday. “We’ll leave because there’s no reason for us to do this.”

Trump indicated that it was possible that Iran could still reach a deal with the U.S. during that time frame but said an agreement with Tehran was not necessary for the war to end. Trump said the U..S would leave when Iran was not able to obtain nuclear weapons and claimed the regime now in power was better than the leadership before the war.

“We have had regime change now. Regime change was not one of the things I had as a goal. I had one goal. They will have no nuclear weapon, and that goal has been attained. They will not have nuclear weapons,” Trump said.

Oil contracts were slightly firmer after the president’s remarks in early action. U.S. equity futures held onto gains after a rally earlier Tuesday.

It is also unclear how concrete the latest timeline offered by the president will be. Trump is known to frequently offer two weeks as the potential time frame for big decisions — imposing deadlines on his own administration and regularly blowing past them. The U.S. has also moved additional troops into the region in recent days, preserving the possibility for future escalation if Trump changes his mind.

The president again expressed frustration with U.S. allies for not helping reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway largely closed since the start of the conflict. His comments Tuesday came as the president has told associates that he is angry with NATO members and other allies, said people familiar with his thinking. With the war dragging on, Trump sees some partners as unwilling to do enough to help achieve a decisive end to the conflict.

“What happens to the strait? We’re not going to have anything to do with because these countries, China, China, will go up, and they’ll fuel up their beautiful ships, and they’ll leave and they’ll take care of themselves, Trump said in the Oval Office. “There’s no reason for us to do it.”

Trump has vacillated between claiming progress in diplomatic talks with Tehran and threatening to escalate strikes as he becomes increasingly insistent about obtaining a ceasefire. Even as he signaled a looming exit on Tuesday, he also indicated the U.S. could target bridges within Iran in a bid to push the country to the negotiating table.

The president realizes that the current situation is untenable, according to another person familiar with his thinking who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Recently, the president’s team has suggested that reopening Hormuz — which carries roughly 20% of seaborne oil supplies — may not be a necessary condition to end the war.

An exit from the conflict might soothe anxious investors who want to see the war’s constant disruptions fade away.

But leaving the status of the strait undetermined — especially with Tehran demanding sovereignty over the waterway as part of a deal — would do little to prevent future volatility in the global economy. Brent has surged around 60% in March, since the war began, and U.S. gasoline topped $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022.

Taken together, the developments suggest that the war Trump started with Israel is no longer solely in his control. That also poses a political risk for the president, who campaigned on not starting any new wars and whose Republican Party faces the prospect of losing control of Congress in the November midterm elections.

Even so, it’s the economic pain caused by the war that is the primary concern weighing on the White House as top officials are increasingly worried about the peril that it poses for GOP lawmakers running for reelection, one of the people said.

“President Trump has always been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury. America’s long-term economic trajectory, however, remains solid with the Administration focused on implementing the President’s proven economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy abundance,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “Once Operation Epic Fury’s objectives have been achieved and these short-term disruptions are behind us, Americans can rest assured that the President’s agenda will unleash the historic job, wage, and economic growth they saw during the first Trump administration.”

Critics have accused the U.S. of underestimating the scale and length of disruption to energy flows stemming from the conflict. Trump and his team, however, have tried to separate the historic threat Iran and its proxy groups pose to the U.S. and the region from the war’s impact on shipping. With the U.S. less reliant on Middle East oil and gas than Asia, he’s also tried to put the onus on others that are more dependent on energy from the region to help fix the problem.

Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. helped drastically reduce the military threat posed by Iran, which he said could set the table for the strait closure to resolve itself.

“Well, I think it’ll automatically open, but my attitude is, I’ve obliterated the country. They have no strength left, and let the countries that are using the strait, let them go and open it,” the president told the New York Post.

That suggestion could alarm Gulf states, which were heartened by Trump’s claim made on Fox News last week that the U.S. would continue to protect Gulf allies even “if we don’t stay” in Iran.

“They’d probably like us to stay,” he said. “If we don’t stay, we’re going to be protecting them. We know, you know, they’ve been very good.”

While the U.S. could conceivably end military operations against Iran and leave Hormuz to a separate coalition task force, doing so would reduce the leverage Washington has over Tehran — particularly since European and Gulf allies are only interested in a narrower mission aimed at opening up the strait, rather than achieving broader strategic goals by bombing Iranian assets.

At the same time, a third U.S. aircraft carrier strike group is heading to the Middle East as military operations against Iran continue, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The USS George H.W. Bush departed Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday.

During the negotiations before the current war, Trump moved an unprecedented array of military assets — from warplanes to aircraft carrier strike groups — into the Middle East, but still failed at getting Iran to cave on certain U.S. demands, such as abandoning its missile program or support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas.

The UAE is the only Gulf Arab country that that has said it will join a naval force to try to reopen Hormuz or provide escorts. Bahrain is working on a U.N. Security Council resolution to give a mandate to a naval task force.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pointed to the president’s post on social media when asked during a briefing Tuesday morning if reopening the strait was an essential objective of Operation Epic Fury.

Hegseth said reopening the strait is “not just a United States of America problem” and said, “ultimately, I think other countries should pay attention when the president speaks. He’s proven when he speaks, he means something. And he’s pointing out — might want to start learning how to fight for yourself.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing Monday that the U.S. was “working towards” fully reopening the strait but did not list that as a core U.S. military objective when asked if Trump would declare victory even if passage through the strait remained slow.

Leavitt reiterated that the core objectives are destroying Iran’s navy, destroying Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantling Iran’s defense industrial infrastructure and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Speaking last Friday after meeting his Group of Seven counterparts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also drew a line between the war’s strategic goals and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

It would be unacceptable if after the operation ends, Iran continues dictating control of the strait and requiring payment to cross it, Rubio said. “The whole world should be outraged by it. We’re impacted by it a little bit. But the rest of the world is impacted by it a lot more.”

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(With assistance from Derek Wallbank and John Harney.)