President Donald Trump declared Sunday that the United States is not ready to strike a deal to end the war with Iran, saying Washington would keep fighting until it secures better terms. More than two weeks into the conflict, Trump told NBC News that Iran's desire to negotiate isn't enough.
"Iran wants to make a deal, and I don't want to make it because the terms aren't good enough yet."
The statement came as the Israeli military announced a new wave of strikes against targets in Western Iran, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting renewed barrages of projectiles, and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz continued to send oil prices soaring. The conflict that began on February 28, when US-Israeli strikes killed Iran's previous supreme leader Ali Khamenei, has now touched nearly every corner of the region.
Trump isn't blinking. And the facts on the ground suggest he has no reason to.
According to Newsmax, Iran's new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed in a written statement to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. Trump dismissed the threat and the man behind it. He suggested Mojtaba may not even be in control of the country.
"I don't know if he's even alive. So far, nobody has been able to show him."
Iran responded Saturday by insisting "there is no problem with the new supreme leader." The denial itself tells a story. When a government has to publicly affirm its head of state is functioning, the picture is not one of strength.
Trump also floated the idea of an international naval operation to escort oil tankers through the Strait, posting on social media Saturday that allied nations should contribute ships to break the bottleneck.
"Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area."
The responses so far have been cautious but not dismissive. The UK Ministry of Defence said it is "currently discussing with our allies and partners a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region." South Korea said it was "closely monitoring President Trump's remarks on social media." Japan's response was more telling. Takayuki Kobayashi, the policy chief of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's ruling party, said the bar for sending Japanese navy ships under existing laws was "extremely high."
Translation: Tokyo wants to help but needs political cover to do it. That's what Trump's public pressure provides. He isn't just requesting assistance. He's making it politically expensive for allies to sit on their hands while their economies bleed from closed shipping lanes.
The Pentagon has already hit more than 15,000 targets in Iran. US forces struck Iran's Kharg Island oil hub on Friday, and Trump suggested in his NBC interview that the US might bomb it again, adding the phrase "just for fun." US media reported that the Pentagon has dispatched the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and around 2,500 Marines to the region.
Trump also warned that US forces would step up strikes on the Iranian coast north of the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Tehran's Revolutionary Guards threatened to hunt down and kill Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The threat is the kind of rhetoric that plays to a domestic audience in Tehran while revealing strategic desperation abroad. You don't vow assassination when you're winning.
Late Saturday, authorities in Dubai said air defences had made further interceptions of projectiles, underscoring that the war's fallout is not confined to Iranian or Israeli territory. UAE port areas, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia: the entire Gulf is on wartime footing.
The human toll is significant. Iranian health ministry figures claim more than 1,200 people have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, though those numbers could not be independently verified. The UN refugee agency reported up to 3.2 million people displaced inside the country.
There are small signs of normalcy returning in pockets. An AFP journalist in Tehran reported that more than a third of stalls in the Tajrish bazaar in the north of the capital had reopened, five days before Nowruz, the Persian New Year. But reopening market stalls in a bombed country is survival, not recovery.
The United States has urged its citizens to leave Iraq, where pro-Iranian groups remain a persistent threat. That's a prudent measure, not an escalation. It reflects a clear-eyed awareness of where Iran's proxy leverage still exists.
The instinct in Washington's foreign policy establishment is always to negotiate early, claim a win, and move on. Trump is rejecting that playbook. He sees an adversary whose supreme leader may or may not be in command, whose military infrastructure is being systematically degraded, whose oil export capability has been physically struck, and whose regional allies are getting intercepted before their projectiles land.
That is not the moment you rush to close a deal. That is the moment you press.
Critics will say this risks prolonging the conflict. But a premature deal that leaves Iran's nuclear ambitions intact, its proxy networks operational, and its revolutionary government emboldened is not peace. It's a pause with a worse sequel. The last several administrations tried that approach. It produced the very regime that now threatens to close one of the world's most critical waterways.
Trump is betting that time and sustained pressure work in America's favor. The military facts support that bet. The diplomatic scramble by allies to figure out how to send ships supports it, too. When the world starts moving toward your position, you don't stop and split the difference.
Iran wanted this war to be fast and survivable. Three weeks in, it is neither.