A rchive Date
[ 07-03-2026 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[https://nationalpost.com/news/world/trump-iran-surrender-no-deal
Trump says 'there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender'
Trump's remarks are a signal that the White House may be girding for an extended conflict after U.S. officials had insisted their goal was not regime change
Bloomberg News Iain Marlow and Patrick Sykes
Mar 06, 2026
President Donald Trump said he doesn’t want to negotiate an end to the war with Iran in a post on social media that demanded Tehran capitulate as US and Israeli airstrikes continue.
“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the US and its allies would select a “GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s).”
The president’s remarks are a signal that the White House may be girding for an extended conflict after US officials had insisted their goal was not regime change. Trump in the early days of the conflict had instead indicated a willingness to still broker a deal. The war has left at least 1,332 people dead in Iran so far, and dozens of others have been killed elsewhere in the region in retaliatory strikes. Six US troops have been killed, all in the first two days of fighting.
Iran is poised to elect a successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28, the first day of the conflict, and Mojtaba Khamenei, the slain leader’s second-oldest son, is in the running. Trump has said dismissed him as a “lightweight” who wouldn’t change the regime’s policies and insisted on being personally involved in picking the country’s next leader.
In a subsequent interview with CNN, Trump said he “may be” fine with Iran having another religious leader, but that the next person to head the country needed to “treat the United States and Israel well.”
“It’s going to work out like it did with Venezuela,” Trump said.
After the US captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, Washington established a relationship with interim President Delcy Rodriguez that has largely kept the government in Caracas intact but seen oil-related concessions, including cutting off shipments to Cuba and rerouting barrels to the US.
Still, Trump’s social media post - and an interview Thursday with NBC News in which he indicated he wanted the Iranian leadership structure removed entirely - suggest he is envisioning a more ambitious overhaul in Tehran.
“We want to go in and clean out everything,” Trump said. “We don’t want someone who would rebuild over a 10-year period.”
Israel, which has joined the US in the campaign against Iran, said Thursday it was beginning its next phase of the campaign, planning to intensify strikes against the regime’s military capabilities. Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones targeting a number of Gulf countries overnight.
Iran made a mistake when they attacked other gulf countries, Trump told CNN on Friday. He rated the war as a “12, maybe 15 on the scale of 10” and said the US was doing very well militarily.
Earlier this week, Iran denied a report that its Ministry of Intelligence reached out to the US to negotiate an end to the Middle East war, following a New York Times report that operatives had indirectly contacted the Central Intelligence Agency in a bid to broker a halt to the fighting.
The report was “pure falsehood and psychological warfare,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, citing a ministry source.
The conflict has pushed Brent crude futures to their highest levels in almost two years and routed bonds across the globe amid concerns that climbing energy prices will force central banks to slow their pace of rate cuts. The dollar is rising the most on a weekly basis since 2024.
Trump downplayed rising oil prices in his interview with CNN, calling the spike “short term.”
“It’ll go way down very quickly,” he said.
© 2026 National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved
 World Fact Book (CIA)] ]
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