Trump pledges no Iran strike before Nov 3, says talks productive
Pentagon continues work on its most detailed Iran strike plan even as Trump extends his no-attack pledge through the midterm election date.
Published
Trump said Thursday that talks with Iran are productive and that the US will not attack before the November 3 election.
The statement extends a pledge he first made a day earlier, when he reversed an earlier position and said no strike would come before the vote. Any strike will wait until after the election, even as the Pentagon prepares its most detailed Iran war plan yet.
Trump said a day earlier that he does not want to pursue an Iran deal, closing off one of the few negotiating tracks mediators had pursued since late September. Iran's atomic energy chief has ruled out concessions on enrichment or handing over uranium custody. Trump's post said a blockade on Iran would stay in full force, even as Washington and Tehran remain apart on what reopening the Strait of Hormuz would require.
Separately, Axios's Barak Ravid has recalled that last year, before publicly denying it, Trump had already decided to strike Iran's nuclear sites, an episode unrelated to Thursday's statement.
The firmer election-deadline language narrows near-term escalation risk for equities, since a resumed-bombing timeline reported for late November would fall after November 3 regardless. It reinforces rather than breaks the pattern set earlier in the day, pairing the "productive" talks language with the same assertion of record Hormuz flows that Iran's own framing continues to dispute. Nothing here resolves the underlying blockade standoff that has stalled every reopening proposal since late September, so the reduced event risk is time-bound rather than a sign the conflict itself is ending.