‘Very Small Price to Pay’: Trump Downplays Cost of Iran War and Hints It Will End Soon

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

President Donald Trump downplayed the cost of his war with Iran in a phone call with PBS News Hour White House correspondent Liz Landers on Monday.

Since the war began three weeks ago, 13 U.S. service members have been killed, and gas prices have risen by 71 cents a gallon. The Strait of Hormuz remains a treacherous passage for oil tankers, and the U.S. Navy reported that 20 commercial oil tankers have been targeted, causing seven fatalities, and four crew members to go missing. Although Trump has requested help from NATO nations to keep the strait open from Iranian attacks, no nation has committed to doing so.

Landers wrote a seven-part post to X on Monday, about a “brief phone call with” she had with the president as he was in the middle of a “very important meeting” about the war.

Landers wrote:

He started with an overall assessment saying “we’re doing very well,” reiterating comments about destroying Iran’s military. He added: “They want to make a deal but they’re not ready to make a deal in my opinion.”

On Kharg Island being hit: “Kharg Island is out of commission except for the pipes, which I left. I didn’t want to hit the pipes because, you know, it’s years of work to put them together.”

@POTUS said he would “strike it again, yeah, I told them openly, I’ll knock the hell out of it.” He noted he purposefully left “100 yards” around “anything having to do with oil” there. “Didn’t even come close,” adding it takes a lot to rebuild infrastructure.

He continued, “I left a lot of infrastructure in Tehran because if you did it, it’s years of building…I could knock out the electric plants in one hour… but if I do that, that’s years of rebuilding and it’s trauma. So I’m trying to hold off on that kind of thing.”

Trump told Landers that the conflict is a “very small price to pay” after decades of terror threats from the Islamic Republic.

“The oil prices will drop like a rock as soon as it’s over,” Trump added, but wouldn’t give a timeline. “I don’t believe it will be long,” he said.

Trump was vague when Landers asked about possible troops on the ground in Iran.

“When I asked if his thinking has changed on that issue, he said, ‘No it’s not changed’ — but he just didn’t want to discuss strategy with a reporter,” Landers wrote.

White House communications director Steven Cheung praised Landers’s reporting, which is an unusual move for an administration that continuously rants about “fake news.”

“Everyone should read this entire thread,” Cheung wrote on X. “It’s great because it’s just President Trump’s own words and messaging without opinion or fake news fluff. Kudos!”

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