Donald Trump has warned he could level Iran with fresh strikes that would knock out its infrastructure and leave its population with years of rebuilding.
In a conversation with PBS News Hour's White House correspondent Liz Landers, the president claimed he had chosen not to completely wipe out Tehran with the U.S. strikes from the last few weeks. Posting snippets of their call to X, Landers published Trump's comments on what may be next for Iran and the U.S.
Trump said he would, "strike it again, yeah, I told them openly, I'll knock the hell out of it. I left a lot of infrastructure in Tehran because if you did it, it's years of building... I could knock out the electric plants in one hour... but if I do that, that's years of rebuilding and it's trauma. So I'm trying to hold off on that kind of thing."
Also reiterated in the conversation was a claim that oil prices would decrease once the war with Iran is over. Trump said the prices would "drop like a rock as soon as it's over" and that he does not "believe it will be long" before this happens.
Landers aired a claim from Trump that Iran is prepared to engage in some form of talks with the US. "They want to make a deal but they're not ready to make a deal in my opinion," Trump said.
The president has been criticized by defense experts who believe he and the administration should have known better than to consider Iran a quick win. The Mirror's U.S. editor Christopher Bucktin wrote, "For decades, strategists warned that attacking Iran risked exactly this scenario. Iran could not defeat the United States in a conventional military confrontation.
"But it could weaponize geography. The Strait of Hormuz is barely 20 miles wide at its narrowest point. Every day, tankers carrying oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE pass through it.
"Disrupt that corridor, and the consequences ripple across the entire world economy. That is precisely what Iran is now doing. Trump either ignored the danger or simply believed brute force would make it irrelevant. Flush with confidence after the dramatic capture of Maduro in Venezuela, he convinced himself another regime could be toppled just as easily."
