Bessent on how Iran war ends: ‘I don’t know’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday he was unsure how the Iran war will end, with the eight-month mark of the conflict nearing.

“I don’t know what ‘crying uncle’ is in Farsi, but they’re going to be crying uncle. You know, they are collapsing. They can’t pay their soldiers. And Rachel, I don’t know how this ends. You never know how this ends,” Bessent told Fox News’s Rachel Campos-Duffy on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” talking about Iran.

“That — the Berlin Wall just came down one day. We don’t know whether the people rise up, the IRGC turn on each other, or they actually come to their senses and want to make a deal not to have a nuclear program,” he added, referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Bessent’s comments come about two weeks before the war with Iran hits the eight-month mark. The war, which is broadly unpopular with the American public, has driven up energy costs in the U.S. as the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for oil exports from the Persian Gulf, has been closed amid the conflict.

The war and its downstream effects have also become a central issue in this year’s midterms, with Democrats hammering Republicans over the conflict and the higher energy costs it has brought.

Trump initially predicted the war would last for a few weeks, but has struggled to find an off-ramp despite the political pain at home. He has recently said it will end soon after the midterms, but has remained vague on how that will happen.

Last week, he said the U.S. would not launch new strikes against Iran before the midterms. The prolonged war has spurred mounting concerns about diminished U.S. weapons stockpiles and the steep cost to friendly countries in the region.

On Friday, the Defense Department updated the number of American service members dead in the Iran war to 21.

The two deaths, which did not happen in combat, recently added to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System were Army Maj. Sorffly Davius and an unidentified Navy sailor, a U.S. official told The Hill over the weekend.