President Donald Trump Tells CNN's Jim Sciutto in a Sunday Phone Interview That Renewed U.S. Attacks on Iran Are ‘Highly Unlikely’ If Talks on Tehran's Nuclear Program Do Not Break Down
Monday, November 9, 2026
President Donald Trump told CNN’s Jim Sciutto in a Sunday phone interview that renewed U.S. attacks on Iran are “highly unlikely” to be necessary if the indirect talks now under way keep making progress — a judgment he repeated five times in the 20-minute call. His case was direct: the decision rests on Tehran. “It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement,” Trump said. “The answer is highly unlikely [that] it’s going to be necessary… I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard.” The talks cover Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway between Iran and Oman through which a large share of the world’s oil passes.
Trump’s reasoning ran through the state of Iran itself. Tehran badly wants a deal, he said, because its economy is failing — he pointed to inflation of 301 percent this year and said the country is “withering away financially.” “So it’s highly unlikely I’ll have to,” he said. “We’ve hit them militarily. We could finish them off.” Eight months after the war began, the fighting sits in a stalemate, with little military action and little public diplomatic movement — and on Trump’s account, it is that pressure, not any American wish for another round of bombing, that is bringing Iran to the table.
The restraint comes with the alternative spelled out in full. Trump said American forces are ready to act if he gives the order: a third “fully locked and loaded” U.S. aircraft carrier strike group has recently arrived in the region. Washington has already identified targets inside Iran, including infrastructure such as power plants and bridges. “We have 38 bridges in our sight that we can knock down in literally one hour,” he said. “They’ll all be down.” He argued a renewed attack would be “unstoppable” because earlier American strikes destroyed Iran’s air defenses: “All of their anti-aircraft is gone…. The only thing they can do is about 10% level — make some missiles and make some drones,” with drone capacity at “about 15% because much of their factories are gone.”
Yet the president stressed he would rather not use that list. He predicted it could take Tehran up to 10 years to rebuild destroyed bridges. “I don’t like ripping down bridges. And the hardest thing to build is a bridge. It takes years, and I’m a good builder,” he said. His preference, stated throughout the interview, is the agreement — strong on the nuclear program, with Hormuz open again — over another strike campaign. No Iranian response to the interview had been reported by Sunday.
What this means: for ordinary households, the difference between the two paths runs straight through daily costs. The Strait of Hormuz carries a large share of the world’s oil; talks that keep it reopening and keep American bombers on the ground point away from the kind of fighting that has already pushed gas prices up during this war, while a breakdown — and the infrastructure strikes Trump described — would risk exactly that shock again, alongside the burden on the American service members manning three carrier strike groups in the region. On Sunday, the president’s message was that the cheaper, quieter road is the one he expects to take: sign the strong agreement, and new attacks stay, in his words, highly unlikely.
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