WASHINGTON — President Trump told The Post on Tuesday that he believes the Iran war is likely to end soon and that other nations can reopen the Strait of Hormuz without US military assistance.
“We’re not going to be there too much longer. We’re obliterating the s–t out of them right now,” Trump said in a phone interview.
Major stock indices jumped dramatically shortly after Trump proclaimed the conflict is wrapping up — amid fears of a more protracted war.
“It’s a total obliteration,” the president said on the heels of a morning Pentagon briefing revealing 11,000 targets have been bombed in 32 days.
“We won’t have to be there much longer — but we have more work to do in terms of killing their offensive, whatever offensive capability they have left.”
The president’s hints of a shorter war spurred a market rally around noon. The Dow closed up more than 1,100 points (2.5%) — in unison with the Nasdaq’s nearly 800-point gain (3.8%) and the S&P’s 185-point bump (2.9%).
Trump spoke optimistically after posting to social media a video of huge explosions near Isfahan that he said hit “a lot of stuff.”
But the president left unanswered his precise vision for reopening the Strait of Hormuz after more than a month of Iran closing the corridor.
Trump told The Post that other countries can sort out the strait because the US uses little of its exports, though the bottleneck has impacted global markets, with the hike in oil costs also trickling down to Americans paying at the pump.