President Donald Trump told a packed Florida rally on Friday that the United States may hit Iran again, opening the door to another round of the military campaign he calls Operation Epic Fury as the war approaches its eighth month.
"We may do another little Epic Fury," Trump said at the rally in Fort Myers, as he spoke about the war. He did not elaborate, and the line landed the way his rally lines do — as a warning Tehran could not miss and a promise his supporters heard loud and clear.
"We may do another little Epic Fury."
Operation Epic Fury is the name the U.S. military uses for its war against Iran, the campaign Washington and Israel opened on February 28. Since then, American and Israeli strikes have battered Iran's military and leadership, and the fighting has spread across the region. Speaking earlier on Friday, Trump said the United States could end the war quickly, but he openly weighed whether Washington should push for a swift conclusion or let the conflict gradually wind down instead.
The remark is a shift in tone from earlier this month, when Trump said the United States would not launch an attack on Iran before the midterm elections. On Friday, with eleven days left before voters decide control of Congress on November 3, the president put the option back on the table in front of a home-state crowd — and made clear the decision is his to make on his timetable, not anyone else's.
The rally, at Alico Arena on the Florida Gulf Coast University campus in Fort Myers, was a turnout mission. Trump was stumping for Byron Donalds, the Naples congressman he endorsed early in 2025 for governor, and for the Republican ticket that includes Senator Ashley Moody's Senate race against Democrat Angie Nixon. Donalds won his August primary by 23 points, and the governor's race against former congressman David Jolly has tightened into the final stretch. Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters put the purpose of the visit plainly: "Turnout is the key this cycle. The President is best to deliver our voters."
Markets heard the Iran line immediately. Oil jumped into the weekend, with U.S. crude rising more than four dollars to about $103.47 a barrel and Brent crude hitting its highest level since May, as traders priced in the risk of a fresh American operation and possible Iranian retaliation.
The other side of the story is the cost of the war itself. Reuters notes that U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and Israeli attacks on Lebanon, have killed thousands and displaced millions. Democrats argue that the war is keeping fuel prices high for American families and say the president is gambling with the economy weeks before an election. Tehran, for its part, has refused Washington's terms, continues to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and insists it will not be dictated to.
Trump's answer to all of it is the record he ran on Friday: America holds the strongest hand, the war ends when he decides it ends, and Iran should not test what another operation would look like. As he told the crowd in Fort Myers: "We may do another little Epic Fury."