President Trump said on Wednesday that the war in Iran was \u201cnot a big thing\u201d for the United States in his latest attempt to play down the effects of the war by pointing to the economy.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump asserted that the conflict, which has killed at least 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 1,700 Iranian civilians<\/a>, drained military stockpiles, and inflicted financial pain on working-class Americans, was going better than expected. He maintained he was \u201cvery proud\u201d of what he called a \u201cdetour\u201d to Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the highest stock market in history with a military conflict going on, or a war \u2014 some people call it war, some people call it a military \u2014 it\u2019s not a big thing for us,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cWe have a great military. It\u2019s not a big thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump went on to falsely claim that \u201ccosts were coming down\u201d for consumers, and cited \u201cgreat financial people\u201d who he said had assured him that because 401(k)s were rising, \u201ceverybody\u2019s making a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to flip the narrative on a conflict that he said would lead to a quick and decisive victory after the U.S. joined a bombing campaign with Israel on Feb. 28. As its goals have grown more elusive, Mr. Trump has become more dismissive of the conflict\u2019s unpopularity, and the economic pains that it is causing Americans at gas pumps and grocery stores.<\/p>\n Last month, Mr. Trump said he did not think about<\/a> Americans\u2019 financial situations when considering whether to end the conflict. Then this week, in a 1 a.m. social media post<\/a>, Mr. Trump chastised politicians who were \u201cchirping\u201d about the war.<\/p>\n \u201cJust sit back and relax,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit will all work out well in the end \u2014 It always does!\u201d<\/p>\n In the last few weeks, the president has signaled that the United States and Iran were close to signing a framework for peace. Last week, he even announced he was heading into the Situation Room to \u201cto make a final determination\u201d on a deal.<\/p>\n No such determination was made.<\/p>\n Then on Monday, he acknowledged that he found the negotiations with Iranian leaders \u201cvery boring<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has given the Iranians numerous deadlines to sign a peace deal, insisting that any agreement must assure that they never have a nuclear weapon. But he has given conflicting statements about where negotiations stand.<\/p>\n Asked about his announcement<\/a> last week that the U.S. and Iran would go in and remove Iran\u2019s enriched uranium stockpile, which can be used to make nuclear weapons<\/a>, Mr. Trump also asserted that Iran had agreed to the condition, but called the operation \u201cvery overrated.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the one that overrated it,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me it was important, to other people it\u2019s not important.\u201d<\/p>\n In another instance, Mr. Trump said in the same breath that Iran had agreed to several conditions, including not to develop a nuclear weapon, before backtracking.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to stop them from having a nuclear weapon \u2014 that\u2019s what we\u2019ve done \u2014 and they\u2019ve agreed to it, by the way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He then said he meant \u201cif they sign the agreement, they will have agreed to \u2018we will not have a nuclear weapon or bomb, we will not develop one, we will not buy one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He added that recent negotiations had been about whether they would buy a nuclear weapon, rather than develop one, and declared that we \u201cin the end we got that,\u201d before adding \u201cif they sign the paper.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn theory they\u2019re pretty close to signing a paper,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019ve actually gotten along with them very well.\u201d<\/p>\n When it came to discussing next steps, Mr. Trump, who has vacillated between threatening annihilation if the Iranians do not meet his demands and waiting them out, was vague. He signaled that the military was ready for a long haul.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could go another two, three weeks and just wipe everybody out,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d rather not do that. Very easy to do. They\u2019re ready to do it. They want to do it. They want to do it. But if we can get something down in writing, which will accomplish the same thing without killing everybody, I\u2019d like to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump said on Wednesday that the war in Iran was \u201cnot a big thing\u201d for the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1451,1448,1452,27306,14670,61145,60,33408,1450,9,24,63,134,136,135,1069,5251,1554],"class_list":["post-254651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-benjamin","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-donald-j","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guards-corps","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-netanyahu","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-trump","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
But the war has instead dragged on for more than three months, with no end in sight.<\/p>\n