WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has described the ongoing confrontation with Iran as “not a war”, claiming that Washington has made significant progress in dealing with Tehran and is currently extracting more oil than before the hostilities.
“We made a lot of progress with Iran. We’re taking out more oil now than we were before the war. It’s not a war. It can’t be a war when for five months nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else. It’s not a war,” Donald Trump said.
These assertions come amid persistent ambiguity regarding the trajectory of the US military campaign targeting Iran, alongside ongoing deliberations concerning fresh air strikes. His contention that current tensions do not constitute a war persists despite White House deliberations regarding active military options, while broader friction with Tehran remains a primary regional concern.
#WATCH | US President Donald Trump says, “We made a lot of progress with Iran. We’re taking out more oil now than we were before the war. It’s not a war. It can’t be a war when for five months nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else. It’s not a war.”
(Source: US Network Pool Via Reuters)
— ANI (@ANI) November 7, 2026
Furthermore, the American leader asserted that regional stability depended entirely on his administration’s past interventions to obstruct Iranian atomic development. In a statement disseminated through his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump stated that his personal intervention against Iran’s nuclear ambitions remained universally recognised yet deliberately underreported.
“Israel and, in fact, the entire Middle East, WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY if I did not stop Iran from having a Nuclear Weapon. Nobody wants to say that, but everybody knows it’s true!” he wrote.
Trump also said that Washington was talking to Iran, while his administration rolled out fresh sanctions targeting eight Canada-based money services businesses accused of assisting Tehran in routing funds through cryptocurrency networks. “We’re talking to Iran. We have been,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House.
The American leader depicted the prevailing military situation as advantageous for Washington, adding that the strategic Strait of Hormuz was now opening. “We’ve beaten Iran. We are doing very well with Iran,” he said.
When questioned about his message to Iran, Trump interwove his assertion of military success with signals that diplomatic contacts remained active. These remarks coincided with the US Treasury Department’s announcement of sanctions against eight Canada-based money services businesses under Operation Economic Outcast.
The Treasury accused these commercial entities of swapping Iranian rials and other currencies into digital assets to channel cross-border transfers involving Tehran. Officials asserted that numerous firms interacted with blacklisted Iranian crypto platforms or digital wallets tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump has repeatedly portrayed operations directed at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as an unqualified triumph. Both Washington and Israeli forces carried out extensive bombardments targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities across 2025 and 2026, framing deterrence against the acquisition of atomic weapons as their core objective.
Nevertheless, a full assessment of the damage sustained by Tehran’s atomic enterprise remains inconclusive. A Congressional Research Service assessment published in October highlighted that the precise operational impact on indigenous weapons manufacturing capability remains undefined. The evaluation additionally emphasised past intelligence consensus indicating that Tehran had refrained from constructing atomic devices.
Meanwhile, Iranian authorities persistently refute ambitions concerning nuclear weapons development, asserting that exclusively civilian applications govern their domestic atomic framework. (ANI)
