President Donald Trump said Thursday, September 17, 2026, that he is close to deciding whether to restart large-scale military action against Iran, telling Axios in an interview that a much more aggressive phase of the war is still on the table. “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me,” he said.
He repeated the threat from the podium at the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, warning that the United States could “annihilate” Iran. At a meeting with regional leaders that same day, he put it another way: “There’s going to be a time when it’s too late, and we won’t have a chance of letting them survive as a nation.”
The timing he would not pin down: asked whether that call would come before or after the U.S. midterm elections in November, he declined to say. Operation Epic Fury, the American military campaign against Iran, began on February 28 and is now in its seventh month.
A Meeting With Six Gulf Leaders
Trump had been expected to sit down with the leaders of six Gulf states — Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The session took place Tuesday, September 22, on the sidelines of the gathering, with the Saudi foreign minister, Qatar’s emir, Jordan’s king, the Turkish and Syrian presidents, Egyptian officials, the UAE foreign minister and the U.S. secretaries of state and the Treasury all in the room. “I think there’s a lot of momentum for them to make a deal. That’s what we’re hearing from everybody,” Trump said. The talks were expected to shape what comes next in the war: either a return to broad military action or a fresh attempt at diplomacy.
The same day, American and Iranian officials held their first known indirect talks since a ceasefire collapsed in July. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner passed messages through mediators on the General Assembly sidelines. The shuttle diplomacy “appeared to have yielded no concessions in the public stance of either side.”
The Gulf governments have a great deal riding on the answer. Warnings from Saudi Arabia and Qatar that Tehran could hit Gulf oil and gas facilities in response prompted Trump to shelve a return to major combat operations in early August. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, meanwhile, have mounted a growing campaign of missile and drone strikes that Saudi Arabia is fending off.
A Different Message a Day Earlier
Trump had sounded far more upbeat on Wednesday, September 16. “Hopefully we’re toward the end of the war. They want to make a deal. We’ll see how that works out,” he told reporters. Asked whether intermediaries were carrying the contact with Tehran, he said the two governments deal directly.
Later that day a rally at Gastonia Municipal Airport in Gastonia, North Carolina, drew him alongside North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley. Iran cannot keep going, Trump told the crowd, and the fighting would be over soon. “You watch what’s gonna happen to Iran. It’s gonna be a really good conclusion,” he said.
On Wednesday, September 9, he predicted the war would end “immediately after” the midterm elections because Iran “can’t hold out any longer.” Any eventual agreement, he indicated, would stretch well past the nuclear limits that dominated earlier talks. “I’m doing much more than a nuclear deal. There’s a lot more than nuclear,” he said.
Blockade, Sanctions and Force Levels
Rather than open a new offensive, Washington has held its naval blockade of Iranian ports in place and widened economic sanctions on Tehran. “Not one ship has gone to Iran since we started. They tried, and we blew them up,” Trump said. At the September 22 meeting, he credited Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with leading “Operation Economic Outcast.” “We’re completely isolating Iran financially,” Trump said.
Reopening shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz has been another priority for the military. More than 900 million barrels of crude moved through the waterway with U.S. military assistance between early May and September 16. “The strait is open. Those lanes are open. And that is why commercial vessels continue to flow through them,” CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said.
Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have ordered American forces in the Middle East to stay at their current strength through the year’s end, so they can resume full-scale combat if the order comes.
The diplomatic file has gone to Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff, who were put in charge of negotiations with Iran; Tehran has signaled it would rather deal with Vice President JD Vance.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Saturday, September 19, that Tehran had routed its terms to Washington through Qatar — an end to the war on all fronts, plus the release of frozen Iranian funds and an end to the naval blockade. “Trump’s threats will not achieve any results. We are prepared for a decisive war,” he said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used his own turn at the General Assembly on September 23 to say Tehran would never surrender to the United States, while saying he still believes in diplomacy. Iran is “ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” he said. A member of the U.S. delegation walked out minutes into the speech.
Gas and oil prices have climbed during the war, and Trump has waved off the worry with the November midterms approaching. “It’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done. Remember that. It’s a little more,” he told the Gastonia crowd on September 16, adding that prices were going to “come tumbling down.”
Araghchi turned his fire on Europe in a September 23 post on X: “In meetings with @kajakallas and other EU counterparts, I warned of the severe long-term consequences of facilitating and supporting Israeli-U.S. war crimes, whether in Gaza or Iran.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had said 5,000 planes have taken off from European bases in support of Epic Fury since February 28.
Planning for What Comes After
An early-stage post-war strategy is taking shape inside the White House, and it rests on a regional effort to contain Iran as well as a broader push to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors. Israel’s election on October 27 and the U.S. midterms in November — two votes — are shaping that planning.
Other pieces moved into place before the General Assembly convened. A potential foreign military sale to Saudi Arabia of 48 F-35 Lightning II aircraft and related equipment, a package valued at $24.3 billion, won clearance from the State Department. Pezeshkian was granted a visa for the New York session, as were Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other high-ranking officials from Tehran.