Trump Says Iran Wants a Deal as He Weighs Further Military Action

Trump's framing of Iran as economically and militarily depleted, paired with his refusal to accept anything short of the right deal, suggests the pressure campaign is being positioned as leverage rather than an end in itself. The open question is whether that leverage produces a negotiated outcome or simply precedes further military action, since Trump is keeping both paths explicitly alive. For markets, the signal is that the binary between escalation and a deal remains unresolved, which keeps risk premia attached to any Iran-sensitive assets.