US President Donald Trump threw cold water Friday on the necessity of having a backup plan should talks with Iran fail to produce an end to the war.
"You don't need a backup plan. The military is defeated. Their military is gone. We've degraded just about everything. They have very few missiles. They have very little manufacturing capability. We've hit them hard," he told reporters as he prepared to depart for Charlottesville, Virginia.
Asked if the talks on Saturday would be the sole opportunity to broker an end to the war, Trump said, "I don't know, I can't tell you. I have to see what happens tomorrow."
Trump wished Vice President JD Vance, who is leading the US delegation, luck, but said the Strait of Hormuz would be opened to traffic "with or without" Iran's consent.
"Now we're going to open up the Gulf, with or without them, but that'll be open, or the strait, as they call it. And I think it's going to go pretty quickly. And if it doesn't, we'll be able to finish it off one way or the other. It's going well," he said.
The president said the US is "not going to let" Iran charge tolls for ships transiting the strategic waterway, saying it will be opened "automatically." Trump said, "Other countries" are willing to assist in the effort, but did not specify to which nations he was referring.
Pakistan, together with Türkiye, China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, managed to secure a two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran earlier this week, ending more than a month of attacks that began when the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28.
As part of the ceasefire deal, the two sides agreed to meet in Islamabad for talks to negotiate a lasting peace.
