President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States will not launch new attacks on Iran before next month's midterm elections, crediting what he described as productive negotiations with Tehran and moving to calm markets rattled by reports that the White House had been weighing strikes within days.
"We are having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday evening. "We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd. IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!"
The announcement came after a string of reports that the White House had directed the Pentagon to draw up limited strike options against Iranian targets for use before voters head to the polls. The Atlantic reported this week that Trump was considering ordering strikes ahead of the elections, and The New York Times reported Thursday that senior White House national security officials had recently discussed plans that included an intense three-day military campaign. The president had himself warned last week that Iran would be hit "very hard" if it was linked to an attack on a FlyDubai cockpit, and has said publicly that he was weighing whether to escalate the eight-month-old conflict and faced a "big decision" on how to bring the war to an end.
Trump's post made clear that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran "will remain in full force and effect." Roughly a dozen Navy ships are currently deployed in Middle Eastern waters to enforce the blockade and carry out other missions, according to a U.S. Navy official.
Markets responded almost immediately. Oil prices, which had jumped on Wednesday to about $105 a barrel on the Brent benchmark after the strike-planning reports surfaced, began to slide once Trump's message landed, falling to roughly $103 a barrel.
The timing reflects the growing political pressure the Iran conflict is creating ahead of the midterms, which will decide control of Congress. Gasoline and diesel prices have been rising nationwide, and some vulnerable Republican candidates have begun publicly urging an end to the conflict — and proposing measures like a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax to ease the pain at the pump. The war has become a liability for a president who campaigned on avoiding new "forever wars."
Meanwhile, the confrontation on the water has continued to escalate. Iran has stepped up attacks on commercial tankers trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, and an attack on an oil tanker north of Qatar — deep inside the Persian Gulf — has raised fears among traders that Tehran's strikes on shipping are spreading beyond the strait itself. Shipping data from analytics firm Kpler showed the number of vessels passing through the waterway fell to seven on Tuesday, the lowest in more than two months, before edging up to 10 on Wednesday. Crude crossing the strait dropped 27 percent from the previous week's wartime high, to at least 10.1 million barrels a day, the firm said.
Trump, for his part, claimed that 22 million barrels of oil flowed through the strait on Wednesday night, with "not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iran." The true volume remains in dispute: the U.S. government maintains output is back at prewar levels, while independent analysts say otherwise.
In Tehran, officials offered no sign of softening. Iran's atomic energy chief, Mohammad Eslami, said Thursday that Iran would neither abandon uranium enrichment nor hand over its uranium stockpile, calling enrichment "an inseparable part" of the country's nuclear program, according to state media. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, warned that Iranian forces were ready "with crushing weapons to deliver a decisive response to any attempt at unauthorised passage in the Strait of Hormuz."
One small diplomatic opening did appear on the aviation front: the first commercial flight by a foreign airline to enter Iran since the outbreak of the Middle East war landed Thursday, state media reported, after Washington granted a sanctions waiver to Iraq's national carrier for pilgrim flights between Iran and the Iraqi city of Najaf.
The president has long been rumored to be considering a resumption of attacks after the midterms. For now, the message from the White House is a pause — but with the blockade intact, the enrichment dispute unresolved, and tanker traffic under threat, the pause comes with a clear expiry date: November 3.