Justin Gaethje<\/a>, to ask his opinion.<\/p>\n\u201cYou would call that \u2018we\u2019re in good shape,\u2019 right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaethje responded: \u201cFantastic shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Trump](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2274848688.jpg\")
Trump turned to UFC fighter Justin Gaethje (second from right) for his opinion on the U.S. war against Iran on Wednesday (Getty)<\/p>\n
Seemingly satisfied, Trump repeated his previous statement about the U.S. being \u201cin good shape\u201d and added that \u201cwe\u2019re doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we have to get what we have to get. If we don’t do that, we’ll have to go a big step. But with that being said, they want to make a deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The president added that there have been \u201cvery good talks\u201d with Tehran \u201cover the last 24 hours\u201d and claimed it was now \u201cvery possible that we\u2019ll make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for statistics to justify his claim that the talks with Iran have been \u201cvery good,\u201d Trump suggested that Tehran\u2019s negotiators seem to forget about what they\u2019ve already allegedly agreed to and attributed the purported forgetfulness to \u201cpride\u201d while comparing Iran\u2019s interlocutors to the prizefighters behind him.<\/p>\n
Trump had the fighters for the June 14 \u2014 Trump\u2019s birthday and also Flag Day \u2014 event in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Alex Pereira will fight Ciryl Gane, while Gaethje will take on Ilia Topuria.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, they’re proud. Like, like, these guys are proud. Nobody more proud than these guys. Sometimes they fight on pride because, you know, they’re injured. They’re hurt. No matter how great you are. You get hit by somebody else that looks like them. It’s very tough. But they have great pride. These people have great pride. The others do too. Enemies have great pride,\u201d he said with the fighters around him at the Resolute desk.<\/p>\n
![\"Trump](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2274844049.jpg\")
Trump had the fighters for the June 14 event in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Alex Pereira will fight Ciryl Gane, while Gaethje (pictured with Trump) will take on Ilia Topuria. (Getty)<\/p>\n
The president then launched into yet another extended soliloquy about the success of a separate U.S. operation to remove now-ex-Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and boasted of record stock market highs in the run-up to the start of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran on February 28.<\/p>\n
He claimed the drops in market values since the start of the war haven\u2019t been as significant as he\u2019d predicted and said oil prices haven\u2019t gone as high as he\u2019d feared even though gasoline prices in the U.S. have reached near-record levels as a result of Iran\u2019s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe stock market’s higher now than when we started this war, and I thought oil prices would go to $200 or $250 \u2014 it’s at $100 now \u2014 and I think you’re surprised, and I’m surprised, but even if it went to $200 it would have been worth it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said, I hate to do this, but we have to make an excursion down to Iran, because we can’t have a nuclear weapon,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The president\u2019s comments came on the heels of a bombshell report from Reuters which cited a U.S. intelligence assessment suggesting that the war against Iran has done little, if anything, to slow Tehran\u2019s nuclear capabilities, just a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the White House that the U.S. side of the bombing campaign, dubbed \u201cOperation Epic Fury,\u201d was \u201cover.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Rubio also said that the conflict\u2019s new phase, Project Freedom, was a defensive operation meant to to save some 23,000 civilian mariners from 87 countries stranded on ships in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
But hours later, Trump abruptly pivoted and claimed that initiative would be placed on hold \u201cby mutual agreement\u201d to allow for productive talks aimed at ending the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12474,34,12473],"class_list":{"0":"post-101349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-bestof","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-topix"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116529892071266190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}