Trump says Iran ‘war is very complete,’ talks to Putin

by Dan Mangan

Key Points

• President Donald Trump told a CBS News reporter that the war against Iran could be over soon.

• Trump also told CBS he had someone other than Iran’s newly announced supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, to lead the country.

• Trump separately spoke to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who shared proposals about quickly ending the war, the Kremlin said.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500, which had been trading down earlier in the day, rose after the president’s comments were posted on X.

President Donald Trump on Monday told a CBS News reporter that the war against Iran could be over soon, and separately spoke to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a call about the war, according to the Kremlin.

“I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” Trump said, according to Weijia Jiang, CBS’s senior White House correspondent.

“They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force,” Trump said, according to Jiang, who posted about her interview with the president on X.

U.S. stock market indices rose on the heels of Jiang’s tweet.

Trump also said that the United States is “very far” ahead of his original estimate that the war could take four to five weeks to conclude, Jiang said.

“Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones,” Trump told CBS. “If you look, they have nothing left. There’s nothing left in a military sense,” Mr. Trump said.

Trump also told the news outlet that he had someone other than Iran’s newly announced supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, to lead the country.

“I have no message for him. None, whatsoever,” Trump said.

During his call with Trump, Putin shared proposals aimed at quickly ending the war, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to the Reuters news service.