President Trump said Tuesday the United States will wrap up its war with Iran within two to three weeks, declared that Tehran does not need to sign a formal agreement for hostilities to end, and brushed aside concerns about Iran’s surviving stockpiles of enriched uranium.

“No, they don’t have to make a deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “When we feel that they are put into the stone ages and won’t be able to come up with a nuclear weapon, then we’ll leave, whether we have a deal or not. It’s irrelevant now.”

Trump said he expected the war to conclude “in week two or three weeks — within maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer.” The White House later announced that Trump would address the nation Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time to provide a war update.

On Iran’s remaining stockpiles of highly enriched uranium — which some experts consider essential to neutralize before any exit — Trump was dismissive. “I don’t even think about it,” he told CBS. “I just know that it’s so deeply buried it’s going to be very hard for anybody” to access. He argued the stockpiles pose no practical threat in their current inaccessible state, even without a formal agreement to account for them.

Trump reiterated his claim that the United States has effectively achieved regime change in Iran, calling the surviving leadership “much more rational” than its predecessors — while also saying regime change was never his goal. He named preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as his sole war aim, appearing to downgrade or set aside at least four other objectives his administration has articulated, including the destruction of Iran’s missile program, navy, and air force, and the cessation of its support for proxy groups.

On the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has shut for more than a month, Trump again declined to commit American forces to reopening the waterway. “I think it’ll be very safe, but we have nothing to do with that,” he said, acknowledging Iran could threaten ships with mines, machine guns, and RPGs.

Trump acknowledged the war may not be the last such campaign. “Maybe in a long time from now, they’ll be able to do a nuclear weapon — you’ll have a president like me, and he will go there and knock the hell out of them again,” he said — a notable departure from his statement three weeks ago that he wanted to avoid returning to Iran “every 10 years.”

At a separate Pentagon briefing, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said U.S. forces have now conducted more than 11,000 strikes against Iranian targets, and disclosed that American B-52 bombers have begun flying overland missions over Iran, made possible by U.S. air superiority.

In a video statement Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the current campaign as the completion of work begun in last June’s Operation Rising Lion. “In Operation Rising Lion, we removed from upon us the immediate threat of Iran arming itself with a nuclear weapon and many ballistic missiles,” he said. “In the current war, we brought a complementary achievement, by smashing the industrial capability of the regime to produce these tools of destruction.” Netanyahu listed ten major war achievements and invoked Pesach, saying Israel had delivered Iran’s axis “10 plagues.” He also promised that the Iranian regime will fall “sooner or later” — appearing to contradict Trump’s claim that regime change has already occurred.

Meanwhile, Pakistan and China issued a joint five-point peace initiative Tuesday calling for an immediate ceasefire, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a UN-backed agreement. A White House official told Israel’s Channel 12 that the administration does not oppose the plan. Trump, in a separate call with the outlet, did not deny knowledge of it, saying only that talks toward ending the war were progressing.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)