Trump Says Iran War to End ‘Soon,’ Easing Oil-Shock Concerns

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said the US and Israel are making significant progress in the war on Iran and could end the conflict “very soon,” cooling a surge in oil prices.

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Trump said the operation that began Feb. 28 is ahead of schedule, while cautioning that fighting would still not be over this week. The two allies continued to bomb Iran overnight and into Tuesday morning, with the Islamic Republic firing drones and missiles at targets across the Middle East in return.  

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Asked whether he would be willing to talk to the Iranians, Trump said it would be possible, Fox News reported on Tuesday. Iranian officials have pushed back against that idea, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf saying on X that the country is “absolutely” not seeking a ceasefire.

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Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told PBS’s News Hour on Monday that talks with the US are not “on our agenda.”

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Addressing concerns about soaring energy prices, Trump said Monday that the US Navy will escort tankers to maintain a steady oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. The effective closure of the waterway — vital to the world’s flow of petroleum — has created bottlenecks and caused regional energy giants to slash production.  

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Brent crude, having climbed to almost $120 a barrel early Monday, eased to about $91 in Tuesday trade. That’s still more than 50% higher than at the start of the year. 

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Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have lowered their collective output by as much as 6.7 million barrels a day, people with knowledge of the matter said. That amounts to about 6% of global supply. There’s little sign Hormuz can be opened quickly without at least a pause in hostilities. 

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Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser called the disruption “the biggest crisis the region’s oil and gas industry has faced.”

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Trump told Republican lawmakers that the US and Israel are “crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force.”  He later said the US had hit 5,000 targets in Iran, reducing the country’s missile capability to a 10th of what it was. The military objectives of the war could be described as “pretty well complete,” he said.

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Even so, Iran pressed ahead with attacks on Israel and Arab states on Tuesday. The United Arab Emirates said it was responding to a missile threat from the Islamic Republic, hours after it reported a drone attack on its consulate in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. One person was killed in an attack on the Bahraini capital of Manama, while Kuwait intercepted six drones.

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There are early signs the attacks on some countries, including the UAE, are waning. Countries from Australia to South Korea and the UK have either helped to boost defenses of Gulf allies or are assessing requests to do so.

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran is prepared to scale back the conflict “on the condition that the airspace, territory, and waters” of neighboring countries aren’t used to launch attacks on the Islamic Republic, according to semi-official Mehr news agency.