President Donald Trump made a startling admission to Axios on Sunday when pressed on whether he intended to escalate his deeply unpopular war against Iran in the near future.
Trump’s phone call with the outlet came just one day after he rejected Iran’s latest proposal to end the war.
Trump was asked during the phone call, according to Axios’ Barak Ravid, whether he was considering resuming strikes against Iran in the wake of his refusal to accept Iran’s terms.
“I am always thinking about it,” Trump answered.
Trump has frequently made violent threats toward Iran, most recently by threatening to commit what The New York Times’ Farnaz Fassihi described as a war crime during his address to the United Nations General Assembly. During his speech, Trump asked himself out loud whether he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “drive it into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations.”
He also told aides last week that he expected to resume bombing Iran after the midterms, according to The Wall Street Journal, and has made countless other threats toward the Middle East nation, perhaps most infamously with his pledge to destroy Iran’s entire civilization in a single night back in April.
Beyond his admission that he is “always thinking” about striking Iran, Trump also told Axios that he expected “more talks” with Iranian negotiators this week. However, he also suggested that a deal was unlikely to be made, at least soon, accusing Iran of having “overplayed their hand.”
Experts have suspected that Trump’s strategy appears to be centered around inflicting enough economic harm on Iran to bolster the United States’ negotiating position, though those same experts fear that such a strategy could “backfire” with deadly consequences.