Pedro Portal
pportal@miamiherald.com
President Donald Trump defended the United States’ ongoing war with Iran during a Saudi-backed investment forum in Miami Beach Friday, as gas prices hit an almost four-year high following Iran’s blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said he thought the stock market was “going to go down even more and I thought oil prices were going to go up higher than they are now. It’s not finished yet.” He added, “It’s sort of finished, but it’s not finished.”
As voters directly feel the impacts of the war at the gas station, Trump promised that “when this war ends,” the economy is “going to be like a rocket ship.” At one point he joked about calling the Strait of Hormuz the “strait of Trump.”
Trump was speaking at the Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit, an investment conference backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, and attended by investors, CEOs and venture capitalists. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chairs the PIF.
Trump spent much of his hourlong speech talking about Iran — insisting that the country is participating in diplomatic negotiations with the United States and saying the ongoing conflict should be called a “military operation,” not a war. U.S.-Israeli strikes started in the country in late February that killed the country’s leader, attacked military bases and killed more than 100 schoolchildren in a strike on a girl’s school, according to reports.
But a strange irony to Trump’s promises is the reporting this week that bin Salman has been pressuring Trump to continue its war with Iran, not seek a swift end, according to the New York Times.
Steve Witkoff , Founder & CEO, The Witkoff Group; U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East, speaks during a coversation with Richard Attias, Chairman of the FII Institute Executive Committee, during the Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit at the Faena Forum in Miami Beach, on Friday, March 27, 2026. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
This is the second year Trump has spoken at the investment forum. Five human rights groups accused the 2025 FII conference of further “whitewashing [Saudi Arabia’s] egregious human rights record.”
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff spoke at a panel at the event before Trump’s remarks, noting that bin Salman “has become a really good friend of mine.” Trump also said that bin Salman is a “fantastic man and a great friend of mine.”
Witkoff also said the war with Iran is not primarily a U.S. “issue.”
“We don’t get a lot of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but we’re doing this for everybody else,” Witkoff said. “Its really not our issue, it’s so far away, but it is our issue in the sense that we have a leadership platform.”
Trump’s speech Friday hit many of his typical rally highlight reels: touting his 2024 election win, saying he should have been granted the Nobel Peace Prize instead of María Corina Machado and castigating former President Joe Biden and the “fake news media.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2026 at 8:02 PM.
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Miami Herald
Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She’s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.