Nine days into the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that the war will end "very soon" and predicted that global oil prices, which skyrocketed above $100 per barrel over the weekend, will come back down.

Speaking at a press conference from Trump National Doral near Miami, the president touted significant military gains, including the destruction of more than 50 Iranian naval ships and the decimation of Iran's air force and anti-aircraft defenses, CNBC reported.

"We've wiped every single force in Iran out, very completely. They have no leadership. It's all been blown up."

When asked directly whether the war would end this week, Trump said "No," but followed immediately with "Very soon."

The military picture

The war, launched on February 28 alongside Israel, has moved at a pace that has clearly exceeded expectations. Trump characterized the operation in terms that left little ambiguity about his confidence in what the military has accomplished.

"This is an excursion a lot of other people wouldn't have done. This was a military success, the likes of which people haven't seen."

Trump did not lay out a detailed endgame but said the war would be over when Iran no longer had the capacity to use weapons against the United States, Israel, and other allies "for a long time." He also revealed that the U.S. has not yet struck some of Iran's most sensitive targets, including its electricity infrastructure, a clear signal that further escalation remains on the table if needed.

Asked about the apparent tension between his "very soon" timeline and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's recent comment that the war is "just beginning," Trump offered no elaboration. The two framings aren't necessarily contradictory. Hegseth may be speaking to the broader strategic posture in the region; Trump is speaking to the kinetic phase of operations. Both can be true.

Oil and the Strait of Hormuz

The economic dimension of this conflict is impossible to ignore. Oil prices surged above $100 per barrel over the weekend, driven in part by fears of disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints.

Those fears aren't hypothetical. Earlier Monday, an unnamed Iranian official suggested that any oil tanker transiting the Strait risked attack by Iran. According to Matt Smith, an oil analyst at energy consulting firm Kpler, only a handful of commercial vessels are currently moving through the waterway.

Trump's response was characteristically direct. He said oil supplies will be more secure for the world in the long run because of the war, and he threatened to hit Iran even harder if it withholds crude from markets.

"We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world."

This is the strategic logic that critics of the conflict keep ignoring. A destabilized Iran that continues to threaten global shipping lanes is not a source of energy stability. It is the obstacle to it. The short-term price spike is real. The long-term calculation is that an Iran stripped of its military capacity to menace the Gulf is a net positive for every country that depends on affordable energy.

Iran's leadership vacuum

One of the more significant developments Trump addressed was Iran's selection of Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father as the country's supreme leader. Trump said he was "disappointed" by the choice, though he declined to say whether the U.S. would seek to assassinate the younger Khamenei.

The word "disappointed" carries weight here. It suggests the administration had hoped the regime might fracture or that a more pragmatic figure might emerge from the chaos. That hasn't happened. Instead, the theocratic establishment has opted for dynastic continuity, handing the reins to the son of a man whose regime has spent decades funding terrorism, pursuing nuclear weapons, and destabilizing the entire Middle East.

Trump framed the broader situation in aspirational terms. "It's the beginning of building a new country."

That language is worth watching. The president has pledged to keep the U.S. out of another lengthy entanglement in the Middle East. There is a wide gap between destroying an adversary's military capacity and rebuilding a nation. The former is a clear military objective. The latter is what turned Iraq and Afghanistan into generational quagmires. The administration appears aware of the distinction, but the rhetoric will need to stay disciplined.

The Putin call

Trump also confirmed that he spoke earlier Monday with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who reportedly shared proposals for the U.S. to quickly end the war. Trump said Putin "was very impressed with what he saw" the United States accomplish in Iran.

Whether Putin's proposals amount to anything substantive remains to be seen. Russia has long maintained a complex relationship with Iran, selling it weapons systems while simultaneously competing with it for influence and energy market share. A weakened Iran is not necessarily bad for Moscow's oil revenues. Putin's interest in a quick resolution may have less to do with humanitarian concern and more to do with the economic calculus of a fellow petrostate watching prices spike.

What comes next

The facts on the ground point to an operation that has achieved extraordinary results in a compressed timeline. More than 50 naval ships destroyed. Air defenses decimated. Leadership infrastructure obliterated. Iran's capacity to project military force has been fundamentally degraded in under two weeks.

The questions that remain are not about whether the military phase succeeded. They are about what follows:

• Will Iran's threat against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz materialize into actual attacks on tankers?
• Will the Khamenei succession produce a regime willing to negotiate, or one that retreats further into defiance?
• Can the administration resist the institutional gravity that always pulls American military operations toward open-ended nation-building?

Trump has said the objective is eliminating Iran's ability to threaten the U.S. and its allies. That is a finite, measurable goal. If the administration holds to it, this operation could stand as a decisive break from the pattern of the last two decades. The military has delivered. Now the discipline has to match.