President Donald Trump convened the first televised Cabinet meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat on Friday, vowing to maintain military pressure on Iran as the US-Iran war enters its sixth month. Trump told the assembled officials and reporters that the United States would keep ‘hitting’ Iran and declared that Washington ‘just wants to win’, while suggesting the campaign could continue for weeks.
The White House highlighted the session as the first televised Cabinet meeting at the storied Maryland retreat. ‘It’s Camp David, and this room is a very, very special room,’ Trump said at the outset, before moving through talking points on the economy, the border and Iran. He pointed to a surge of migrants into Spain’s Ceuta enclave as a warning for American voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The meeting unfolded as the conflict grinds on with no endgame in sight. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Friday they struck two tankers under US air escort in the Strait of Hormuz, and earlier attacks hit US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, widening the tit-for-tat exchanges that began with Iranian missile strikes on American positions in Jordan.
Asked whether he would permit Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missile interceptors under license, Trump declined to endorse the idea, a shift from his earlier openness to it. ‘You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. Now, we have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology, and I don’t think this would ever happen,’ he said.
Trump used the discussion to recount how American interceptors shot down five Iranian ballistic missiles over Jordan. ‘The other day you read that five missiles were shot. They were going 8,600 miles per hour … and they were big missiles, and they were shot at Jordan, and our guys were there – bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Five missiles, and we shot all before they got close,’ he said, calling the Patriot system ‘incredible’ and claiming ‘nobody else’ has comparable anti-missile capability.
The Patriot question comes as Trump has warmed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he met at the White House on Tuesday before both attended the funeral of the late senator Lindsey Graham. Zelensky said on X that they had a ‘good meeting’ and discussed the licensing matter ‘and several other ideas that could help’, adding that ‘it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated’.
The war has sent gasoline prices spiraling and taken a toll on Trump’s standing. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this week found just one in three Americans support the war, the lowest reading since the conflict’s early days, according to Reuters. Republicans worry the economic fallout will hurt them in November, with the White House under pressure over pump prices even as oil majors post record profits.
The Camp David session underscored how the conflict now dominates the White House agenda, mixing military messaging with election-year politics. With the Strait of Hormuz largely shut to shipping and attacks spreading to Egyptian waters, officials gave no sign of a timeline for de-escalation, saying only that the United States would keep striking until Tehran meets American terms.
Sources: The Independent, PBS NewsHour (AP), The Hindu (Reuters)
Author: Middle East Desk
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