Photo: The White House, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Official portrait — not a photo of the Politico interview.
US President Donald Trump has left the door open to further military operations against Iran while ruling out the use of nuclear weapons, saying American strikes have already destroyed 90 percent of their targets. The comments, made in a telephone interview with Politico and published on Wednesday, November 4, drew a swift warning from Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who said any renewed American attack would trigger a far wider Iranian response.
The exchange, coming a day after Democrats swept control of Congress in the midterm elections, shows how quickly the post-election debate over the nine-month-old US-Israeli war with Iran has turned back to the question both sides have avoided answering directly: what happens next.
What Trump told Politico
Asked whether he would consider expanding military operations against Iran, Trump did not close off the option. "We're going to take a look, and if we see any opportunity to do one thing or another, we're going to do what's best for this country," he said, according to reports of the interview.
Asked directly whether the United States might use nuclear weapons against Iran, Trump dismissed the idea. "I don't need that. We have already taken out 90% of them. So there is no need for that," he said.
Trump did not specify what the 90 percent figure covered — whether nuclear facilities, military targets or something broader — and it should be read as his own assessment of the damage inflicted by previous American operations, not as an independently verified measure of Iran's remaining capabilities.
The nuclear question did not come from nowhere. Two days earlier, American journalist Tucker Carlson had suggested on X that the Trump administration, under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, might launch a nuclear strike on Iran within days, naming a site at Mount Pickaxe where Israeli intelligence claims Iran may have resumed uranium enrichment. Iran has denied the existence of any new nuclear facility there and described the claim as baseless.
Trump's Politico remarks also sit alongside a different message he gave days earlier. In an interview with the Financial Times on November 3, he said the United States had no immediate plans to launch another attack on Iran, while keeping the military option open. And on Tuesday, US forces carried out limited strikes on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, even as Trump said Tehran was eager for a settlement.
Khamenei's warning: no policy change, wider retaliation
Khamenei answered in a written statement published on his website on Wednesday, marking Iran's National Day of the Fight Against Global Arrogance, the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.
Anyone expecting a shift in American policy toward Iran after the midterm elections, he said, is "seriously mistaken" — and those who believe concessions to Washington could dissuade it from hostility are equally mistaken. He said Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz had shattered the "myth of America's invincibility," and warned: "In the event of repeated transgressions, it will take on much wider dimensions."
The warning was echoed by an adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hamidreza Moghadamfar, who said Iran would hit targets beyond US bases if Gulf states allowed Washington to launch attacks from their territory.
It also follows a directive Khamenei gave Iran's senior military commanders on October 31, reported by Axios, ordering the IRGC to prepare an "immediate, impactful and geographically unrestricted response" to any future attack by the US or Israel, including expanded target lists and increased production of military equipment.
Why the exchange matters now
The timing matters. The war, launched jointly by the US and Israel in February, has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway carrying about a fifth of the world's oil — and pushed up fuel prices, a factor Trump himself has acknowledged contributed to Republican losses on Tuesday. Democrats, who will control both chambers of Congress from January, campaigned heavily against the war's cost.
For now, the two statements define the standoff: Washington says further strikes are possible but nuclear weapons are unnecessary; Tehran says any new strike will be met on a much larger scale than before. Neither side has announced a change in military posture, and indirect negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme remain stalled. But with both leaders speaking in public on the same day, the margin for miscalculation has narrowed — and the next move, from either side, is now the story to watch.
Sources: Politico interview with President Donald Trump as reported by APA, November 4, 2026; Al Jazeera, "Iran hails US voters rejecting war while Khamenei warns hostility won't end," November 4, 2026; News18, November 4, 2026; NDTV Profit, November 4, 2026; The Week, November 4, 2026. Trump's 90% figure is his own claim and has not been independently verified; Khamenei's statement is as published on his website and reported by Al Jazeera and other outlets.