President Trump said Wednesday he is “in no hurry” to land a diplomatic agreement with Iran and asserted total control over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisions on a potential Israeli strike, telling reporters the Israeli leader “will do whatever I want him to do.”

“I’m in no hurry,” Trump said. “Everyone is saying, ‘Oh, the midterms.’ I’m in no hurry.”

Pressed on what he has been saying to Netanyahu lately about a possible attack on the Islamic Republic, Trump waved off any suggestion of friction. “He’s fine, he’ll do whatever I want him to do,” the president said. “He’s a very good man, he’ll do whatever I want him to do. And he’s a great guy. Don’t forget he was a wartime prime minister.”

Trump added: “I’m right now at 99% (support) in Israel. I could run for prime minister, so maybe after I do this, I’ll go to Israel and run for prime minister.”

Trump was asked whether he would accept a narrow agreement that opened the Strait of Hormuz and extended the existing cease-fire without resolving the larger nuclear question. He left the door open but signaled he would not accept a watered-down arrangement under pressure.

“We’d have to open the strait. That would open immediately, so we’re gonna give this one shot. I’m in no hurry,” Trump said. “Everyone is saying, ‘Oh, the midterms.’ I’m in no hurry. Ideally I’d like to see few people killed, as opposed to a lot.”

The president’s timeline has shifted by the day. He told reporters Tuesday he could give negotiators “two or three days” or perhaps “a limited period of time” to reach an agreement, after disclosing earlier in the week that he had personally canceled a planned American strike on Iran just hours before it was set to launch.

The Strait of Hormuz sits at the center of the diplomatic impasse. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply moves through the narrow waterway, and Tehran’s interference with tanker traffic has been one of its principal forms of leverage since fighting began. Trump has demanded the strait be fully reopened as a precondition for any pause in military operations, and a previous two-week cease-fire arrangement was built around the same demand.

Iran is pressing in the opposite direction. Tehran is seeking formal sovereignty over the strait and the withdrawal of American troops from neighboring countries, and has refused so far to make any nuclear concessions, which the president has identified as his core requirement for ending the war.

The Israeli government, which has carried out independent strikes on Iranian targets throughout the conflict, has publicly aligned itself with Trump’s stop-and-start approach. Netanyahu’s office previously backed the president’s earlier two-week pause in exchange for the strait reopening, and Trump’s comments Wednesday suggested Jerusalem will continue to follow his lead on any future escalation.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday warned that any renewed American or Israeli attack would push the war “beyond the region,” with threats of strikes against targets outside the Middle East. Trump did not directly address that warning.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)