Trump hints at fresh Iran strikes before midterms

Washington: US President Donald Trump has said that fresh military strikes against Iran before the November midterm elections were “possible,” and added that the war would end “very soon.”

“I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to win this war very soon,” Trump said at the PGA Tour Presidents Cup, adding that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was “key to the whole thing.”

Trump said the United States was succeeding both militarily and economically against Iran. “We’ve already won it really from a military standpoint,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped that.”

Asked whether military strikes could be back on the table before the midterms, Trump declined to rule them out. “I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to say that. I mean, it’s possible, but I just don’t want to say that,” he said. Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that oil flows through the strait were averaging nearly 13 million barrels a day, with shipments exceeding pre-conflict levels on at least one day last week.

“There was a day just this last week where over 20 million barrels of oil, more than pre-conflict levels, flowed out of the strait,” Wright told Fox News. The current average was “almost 13 million barrels a day,” he added.

Wright attributed pressure on energy prices more to limited refining capacity than to the volume of oil moving through Hormuz.

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