Photo: Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg/Getty Images
If you ask Donald Trump, his war with Iran has been over, or just about over, almost since the very start. Just ten days after the first missile strike in February, the president announced, “The war is very complete — pretty much.” He’s been offering kaleidoscopic assessments ever since; the war may be long over or on the verge of wrapping up, depending on the day and who’s asking.
So it’s fitting that on the eve of a midterms election that may be heavily influenced by voters’ distaste for the Iran war — or at least its economic impact — Trump delivered a condensed version of his “all of the above” answer on the state of the conflict.
On Monday night, Trump called into Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity. After displaying a list of Trump’s purported second-term accomplishments, the host set the president up to argue that the Iran war doesn’t actually violate his “no forever wars” campaign pledge.
Hannity is showing a scrolling list of President Trump’s accomplishments during his phone interview with the president on Election Eve pic.twitter.com/bBuh9Za18o
— Julia Manchester (@JuliaManch) November 3, 2026
Hannity noted, at the six-minute mark in the video below, that many administration officials have argued they simply “had no choice” on launching a war with Iran. “Both Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury were to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon … [the conflict] will come to an end. How can you assure the American people on that point tonight?”
Trump gave it a shot, but his point on Iran was lost in some hard-to-follow weaving on the stock market, Greenland, and Venezuela. He concluded by hinting that the war actually isn’t coming to an end, as the U.S. might soon strike Pickaxe Mountain, the site of an underground facility linked to Tehran’s nuclear program.
“Now, we might have to go after Pickaxe, but that’s not a big deal,” Trump said. “We can do it in literally — we can do that in one hour, okay, as soon as we want, at any time we want.”
So aside from this potential nuclear-weapon-related bombing, the war is over? Well, according to Trump, that’s really a semantic question.
“I mean, what’s a war?” Trump said. “A war is — a war is fighting. Take a look at World War I, World War II, these were — when was the last time you saw us fighting with them? … We’re not fighting a war. Everyone says ‘You’re at war.’ Well, when was the last time we fired anything?”
Inconveniently for Trump, the last time the U.S. fired something at Iran was actually Monday. Shortly after the Hannity interview aired, The Wall Street Journal reported:
The U.S. attacked Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, U.S. officials said, in the latest of a series of limited strikes Washington has secretly carried out against the country in recent weeks as President Trump touted the possibility of a diplomatic deal.
But it seems air strikes on Qeshm Island don’t meet Trump’s new definition of military engagement. Trump also told Hannity the situation with Iran is merely a “soft war”:
This isn’t a war, this is a very soft war. We did have a big hit on them, and we hit them very hard and that took out their navy. 159 ships are gone, but this isn’t like a war that’s going on. There’s no war raging.
Could happen if they don’t make a deal, but they want to make a deal very badly and there’s a very good chance we make a deal. But they want to — but here’s the thing, we’re dealing from total strength. We can end it at any time. If I can make a deal, I’d rather do it, save a lot of lives, but we can — but think about a war, this isn’t war. … So this is not much of a war, Sean, because there hasn’t been shooting for months.
This is what Trump has been saying all along. There hasn’t been any Saving Private Ryan–style fighting, so the Iran War is “very complete — pretty much.” (Except for yesterday’s strikes on Qeshm Island, the potential bombing of Pickaxe Mountain, and the fact that gas prices are at a new high for an Election Day — which are all no big deal!) Why are voters having such a hard time grasping this?
Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter
Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice