# Trump says US plans to wind down Iran operations in about two weeks
On March 31, 2026, President Donald Trump said the United States expected to wrap up its operations in Iran "very soon", putting a rough timetable of two weeks to a little longer on the campaign while the war continued. He made the remarks while the administration was still pursuing talks with Iranian authorities and still carrying out air operations.
Trump's central message was that the US would leave when it believed the job was done, not when a diplomatic agreement had been struck. He said the end point would come once officials felt Iran had been pushed far enough back that it could not quickly rebuild a nuclear weapon. In his telling, whether a deal was reached was beside the point.
The president also used the moment to reinforce his hard line on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which much of the world's oil passes. He told countries that wanted access to the route that they should secure it themselves, suggesting that the US would not keep doing the heavy lifting for others. In a Truth Social post, he repeated the same message more bluntly, arguing that foreign consumers should go and get their own oil.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed that line at a news conference, saying the burden of future operations would not fall entirely on Washington even though the US had done most of the preparation. He described the coming days as decisive and would not rule out the possibility that US ground forces could play some role in the conflict. Hegseth also said he had traveled unannounced to see troops involved in the campaign, though he did not identify the locations for security reasons.
The comments came against a backdrop of a widening regional shock. Iran has effectively shut tanker traffic through Hormuz in retaliation, driving up anxiety over fuel supplies and putting pressure on allies that had already been asked for support. Trump framed the war as a military task that was nearing completion, but his own remarks showed how much of the regional cost was still unresolved.
That tension between an asserted endgame and an ongoing conflict is the clearest feature of the US position. Washington is still striking targets, still watching the energy market, and still asking how long it can sustain the operation before declaring success. Trump's answer, at least on March 31, was that the timeline was short and the end was close, even if the war itself was not yet over.
The short timetable also tells allies how Washington is thinking about the war's political clock. A two-week horizon is meant to sound decisive, but it also leaves very little room for setbacks, surprise damage or a longer debate over what counts as success. For energy markets and regional governments, that matters because even a brief stretch of uncertainty can move prices, unsettle shipping plans and change how long partners are willing to wait before pressing for an exit.
