Says it's unknown if Mojtaba Khamenei is alive

Trump slams allies’ low ‘enthusiasm’ for his proposed coalition to open Hormuz

US president says ‘numerous countries’ have said they’re joining, urges others to do so; stresses war will ‘be wrapped up soon,’ but likely not this week: ‘We’re going to have a much safer world’

US President Donald Trump on Monday accused allies of showing low “enthusiasm” for the coalition he proposed to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most vital route for oil tankers.

Trump also said he could wrap up the war this week but does not think he will, while defending the conflict as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“It’ll be wrapped up soon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re going to have a much safer world.”

Shipping in the Persian Gulf waterway has come to a virtual halt after Tehran threatened to target vessels there in response to the bombing campaign that the US and Israel launched on Iran on February 28 in a bid to destabilize the regime and set back its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Trump on Saturday urged allied countries to help the US ensure safe passage through the strait, the closure of which has led to a sharp rise in oil prices. He has said Israel was helping the US secure the strait.

Speaking at an event at the White House on Monday, Trump said, “Numerous countries have told me they’re on the way.”

“Some are very enthusiastic about it… and some aren’t,” he said, without elaborating. “The level of enthusiasm matters to me.”

“We strongly encourage the other nations to get involved with us and get involved quickly, with great enthusiasm,” he said, adding that one or two countries would likely decline to join the initiative.

He claimed skeptics of the initiative included countries that the US has helped for many years, and that securing the Strait of Hormuz would be more beneficial to other countries than to the US because the latter does not use the strait to import oil.

“We don’t need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world,” he said. “I’m almost doing [this initiative]… because I want to find out how [countries will] react. I’ve been saying for years that if we ever did need them, they won’t be there.”

Asked if he had spoken with French President Emmanuel Macron about the initiative to reopen Hormuz, Trump said he had and that “I think he’s going to help.”

“On a scale of zero to 10, I’d say he’s been an eight,” Trump said. “Not perfect, but it’s France.”

Trump also said he thought the UK would join, even as he assailed the conduct of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has refused to send an aircraft carrier to the region.

“I was not happy with the UK. I think they’ll be involved, yeah, maybe. But they should be involved enthusiastically,” Trump said, adding that he had said to Starmer: “You’re our oldest ally, and we spend a lot of money on, you know, NATO and all of these things to protect you.”

Starmer said earlier that London was working with allies to craft a “viable” plan to reopen the strategic waterway, but ruled out a NATO mission.

In a meeting Monday, European Union foreign ministers showed “no appetite” to expand an EU naval mission in the Middle East to the Strait of Hormuz for the time being, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

“There was in our discussions a clear wish to strengthen this operation, but for the time being, there was no appetite in changing the mandate of the operation,” Kallas told reporters after the meeting in Brussels.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told reporters in Brussels that his country favors strengthening anti-piracy and defensive missions in the Red Sea, but said he did not believe in expanding their roles to the Strait of Hormuz.

Japan and Australia both said Monday that they had not been asked to help protect the strait and had no current plans to do so.

Trump, in his comments, also insisted that Iran itself was a “paper tiger” after two weeks of joint US-Israeli airstrikes, adding that Washington was unclear whom it could negotiate with in Tehran.

“We don’t know… if he’s dead or not,” Trump said when asked about the condition of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father and predecessor Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli bombing campaign.

“A lot of people are saying that he’s badly disfigured. They’re saying that he lost his leg — one leg — and he’s, you know, been hurt very badly. Other people are saying he’s dead. Nobody’s saying he’s 100 percent healthy,” he said.

“We don’t know who we’re dealing with” in Iran, Trump said. “We don’t know who their leader is.”

The younger Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since being named supreme leader last week, purportedly called to use “the lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz” in a statement read out by Iranian state media on Thursday.

Trump reiterated in his remarks on Monday that Iranian officials have expressed interest in reaching a diplomatic agreement with the US, but that he is not ready to do so.

“They want to make a deal. They’re talking to our people. I don’t know if they’re ready yet. They’re taking a pounding,” Trump said, while emphasizing that “we don’t even know who their leaders are because the first group was all dead and the second group got knocked out.”

“But we met with the next group, but we don’t know who their leader is,” he continued. “We have people wanting to negotiate. We have no idea who they are.”

Trump was asked by a reporter about a call from his unofficial AI adviser David Sacks for the US to quickly declare victory against Iran or risk getting entangled in a dragged-out conflict where Israel could well use a nuclear weapon.

Trump said he had not heard about those comments from Sacks, but insisted that “Israel wouldn’t do that. Israel would never do that.”

As for Iran, however, he said: “You can’t let the most violent, vicious country in the last 50 years have a nuclear weapon, because the Middle East will be gone. Israel will go first without question,″ he added, “and they’ll certainly take a shot at us before we get our act together.”

In later remarks to reporters, Trump said, “If you believe that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, they should not have it, then you have to absolutely love what I’ve done,” stressing his claim that the Islamic Republic would have used an atomic bomb first against Israel and then the rest of the Middle East had he not struck the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites last year.

He also asserted that Iran “unexpectedly” decided to fire at its Arab neighbors in retaliation to the ongoing Israeli and US strikes. Iran had long warned — including days before the strikes began — that it would ensure any war launched against it would turn into a regional war.