President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States could strike Iran as soon as Sunday, October 25, or reach a major agreement with Tehran instead, leaving both outcomes open hours before the day he named arrived. Speaking to reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, after casting his early ballot in the November 3 midterm elections, Trump refused to say whether a decision had been made. "Do you really think I'd tell you that? Maybe tomorrow… There's a possibility I will," he said, according to ANI. "There's also a possibility we'll have a nice, big, beautiful agreement. They want to make a deal, but the problem is, will they hold the deal?" Al Jazeera's live coverage summarised the choice in his words as Washington having to "finish the job" or reach a deal. No strike and no agreement had been announced as of early Sunday.
What did Trump say in Florida?
Trump's Saturday remarks were his most specific timing yet in a week of escalating statements. On Friday he had told a rally the US might do "another little Epic Fury" — the codename for the US campaign against Iran — or that Tehran would agree, and his ambassador to Türkiye, Tom Barrack, said the same day that a strike this weekend was "absolutely" possible, remarks Trump later said he knew nothing about. On Saturday, asked how far his deliberations on an attack had gone, he answered: "We're thinking about doing it, and maybe tomorrow." He said his goal was to make it permanent that Iran could never build a nuclear weapon, and argued an earlier US operation using B-2 bombers would not by itself guarantee that outcome. He also claimed the US military had knocked out every Iranian jet fighter and that 259 Iranian ships were "at the bottom of the sea," leaving Iran with "record inflation," ANI reported. Those figures are Trump's claims; the reporting opened for this article did not independently establish them, and they are published as his statements only. He also claimed, without giving figures, that oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz had increased compared with before the war.
How has Iran responded?
Iran's president answered on the same day, from the opposite direction. Masoud Pezeshkian, in remarks broadcast on Iranian state television on Saturday, blamed the United States for the failure of an interim deal aimed at ending the war, but said a deal should still be concluded. "We were having negotiations, the cowards (Americans) messed everything up… I still think we should go and conclude it," Pezeshkian said, Reuters reported. Dawn, citing the semi-official ISNA agency and AFP, reported him saying Iran must get out of its "no war, no peace" situation. On the channel Tehran has used before — Pakistan's mediation — the accounts conflict. Dawn reported that Iran's ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, told a seminar in Islamabad, in remarks carried by the Associated Press, that Tehran had conveyed through Islamabad that it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz if Washington lifted its naval blockade of Iranian ports, and that Trump had rejected the proposal by insisting the blockade continue. The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency said Iran had made no new proposal to the Pakistani mediators, and Press TV, relaying Tasnim's sources, called the reported offer "a lie and fabrication." Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said in Baghdad on October 18 that Iran's position rested on the seven-day proposal it had presented to the US and that Tehran was reviewing Washington's comments on it. The existence of a fresh Hormuz offer is therefore disputed on the record and is published as such.
Why is Washington also warning about plots against Americans?
The strike talk is running alongside a documented threat warning. Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an unclassified memo dated October 23, seen by Reuters and first reported by Axios, that "through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target US personnel" and that "the lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against US citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries." CIA Director John Ratcliffe was copied on the memo. The State Department on Wednesday ordered non-emergency employees and their families to leave US missions in Saudi Arabia and planned family withdrawals from other regional missions, US officials told Reuters, after Washington scaled back its Saudi staffing in response to intensified attacks by Iran-aligned Houthi forces. On Saturday, the department updated travel advisories for more than a dozen countries across the Gulf and Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Israel, citing an increased threat from Iran-aligned Houthis. "The threat of Houthi attacks and of Iranian terror plots targeting US officials are informing our decisions on staffing adjustments for embassies," a US official told Reuters. The Iran war, which began with US-Israeli strikes on February 28, is a week from entering its ninth month, and Reuters noted it has weighed on Trump's approval ratings ahead of the November 3 midterms — the same elections Trump was voting in when he named Sunday as a possible strike day. Whether Sunday brings a strike, a deal or neither is not known; what is documented is that both capitals spent Saturday publicly preparing their audiences for either.
This report is drawn from ANI's October 25, 2026 report, opened and read in full via apnamatvchannel.com; Al Jazeera's October 25, 2026 live coverage, opened and read via haitigazette.com, a verbatim Al Jazeera carrier; Reuters' October 24, 2026 reports on President Pezeshkian's remarks and on the Clayton intelligence memo, each opened and read in full on reuters.com; and Dawn reporting summarised in an October 25, 2026 report opened and read in full. Trump's remarks are published as his statements, including his unverified figures for Iranian losses, which are flagged as his claims. The reported Hormuz offer is disputed — AP-carried remarks by Iran's ambassador to Pakistan describe it, while Tasnim denies any new proposal was made — and both accounts are published attributed. No markets snapshot box is included: oil markets are closed over the weekend and the last settlement, Friday's Brent close, has already been reported in this site's October 23–24 coverage; no fresh conflict-tied figure was available at publish time.
