Trump banking on ‘swift end’ of Iran war to bring down fuel prices

Dawn · 16/10/2026، 2:30:44 AM

• Pezeshkian decries US blockade, insists ‘military force’ will not compel Tehran into submission • Washington weighs using ‘Mother Of All Bombs’ against Iranian energy sites, CNN reports WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump once again predicted a swift end to the war with Iran, and a sharp drop in oil prices once the conflict concludes, even as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that military action cannot force them into submission. “The Iran war will end very soon … Soon, as they want it to end,” Trump told reporters in Montana. “They’ll never have a nuclear weapon, and oil prices will drop like a rock.” According to Anadolu Agency , Trump also expressed uncertainty over which Ira­nian officials the US was negotiating with. “They don’t have a navy. They don’t have an air force. Their army is decimated. Their leaders are gone,” Trump said. “I should have probably left their leaders because I don’t know who the hell we’re negotiating with.” “Iran was the bully of the Middle East,” he said, adding that the country was no longer as powerful as it had been. Trump also claimed that US strikes had destroyed Iran’s naval fleet and rendered its military aircraft unusable. He said Iran had 159 ships and asserted that none remained operational, while also claiming that its fighter jets had been destroyed on the country’s runways. ‘Iran won’t submit to force’ Meanwhile in Tehran, President Pezeshkian warned that military action cannot force a country into submission, adding that his country “must find a way to strengthen national cohesion and unity”, Al Jazeera reported. He said that the country was facing its most intense blockade since the 1979 Revolution, accusing the United States of seeking to provoke public protests. “Over the 48 years since the Revolution, we have never faced such intense blockade, war and difficulties as we are facing now,” Pezeshkian said in a speech broadcast by state television. He accused Washington of seeking to make life difficult for