Trump says he’s ‘unlikely’ to renew attacks on Iran if talks show progress

President Trump said he was “highly unlikely” to renew attacks against Iran if upcoming peace talks show progress regarding Tehran’s nuclear program and opening the Strait of Hormuz, according to a new CNN report .

“It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement,” Trump said during an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “The answer is highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary. They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301% inflation. Highly unlikely it will be necessary. I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don’t know how hard I hit them.”

“So it’s highly unlikely I’ll have to,” he continued while on the phone with Sciutto. “They’re withering away financially. We’ve hit them militarily. We could finish them off.”

Trump added that “most likely it will not be necessary” to renew military action because “they want to make a deal so badly.”

The U.S. reportedly launched new defensive strikes against Iran over the weekend that targeted the country’s air defense systems. The president described the attack as “minor” on Friday.

They followed up on alleged attacks from Nov. 2 that struck Iran’s Qeshm Island, home to an Iranian naval base and located in the critical Strait of Hormuz. The strikes ahead of the midterms were not publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, which had not disclosed any attacks on Iranian targets since early September.

Trump had previously said he would not strike Iran until after the midterms.

During the interview, Trump confirmed that the U.S. had identified “38 bridges” and other infrastructure projects to target if Iran decided to relaunch attacks, but he reiterated he doesn’t “want to do that because essentially, it’ll take 10 years to rebuild them.”

“I don’t like ripping down bridges. And the hardest thing to build is a bridge. It takes years, and I’m a good builder,” he continued.

The Iran war is wildly unpopular among the American public, as an October Reuters/Ipsos survey reported that just 33 percent of Americans approved of the Iran war, while 62 percent disapproved.