Iran War Live Updates: Trump Says U.S. Is Considering ‘Winding Down’ War

 

 Updated

March 20, 2026, 11:16 p.m. ET2 hours ago

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/20/world/iran-war-oil-trump

 

Iran War Live Updates: Trump Says U.S. Is Considering ‘Winding Down’ War

 

The president made the comment on social media a short time after telling reporters on the White House lawn that he wasn’t interested in a cease-fire because the U.S. was “obliterating the other side.” The Treasury Department lifted sanctions on some Iranian oil.

 

David E. SangerAlan RappeportEmmett Lindner and Richard Pérez-Peña

 

Here’s the latest.

President Trump said in a social media post on Friday that the United States was considering “winding down” the war with Iran as it was “getting very close” to meeting its objectives. His remarks came even as U.S. officials said they were ramping up aerial assaults against Iranian drones and naval vessels in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Earlier, Mr. Trump told reporters on the White House lawn: “I don’t want to do a cease-fire. You know, you don’t do a cease-fire when you’re literally obliterating the other side.” The president has said multiple times that the war was nearly over, only for U.S. attacks to intensify.

 

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran approaches the three-week mark, American commanders are still trying to eliminate Iran’s ability to choke off the strait, the critical passageway in and out of the Persian Gulf. It has used a lethal combination of mines, missiles and armed drones — or the threat of using them — to all but shut down shipping through the strait, through which passes a large part of the world’s oil and natural gas.

 

“I think we’ve won,” Mr. Trump said, saying of Iran that “all they’re doing is clogging up the strait.” Later, in his social media post on Friday, he wrote: “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated.”

 

Iran has continued to strike out at its Persian Gulf neighbors, shaking the world’s energy supplies and the global economy. At least 37 oil refineries, natural gas fields and other energy sites in nine countries have been damaged in drone and missile attacks since the United States and Israel began bombarding Iran, a New York Times analysis found. U.S. and Middle Eastern officials have blamed those strikes on Iran, which has taken responsibility for some of them.

 

The price of oil rose once again on Friday, the global benchmark crude settling for the day around $112 a barrel, up more than 50 percent since the war began. The S&P 500 Index fell about 1.5 percent, losing ground for the fourth straight week.

 

The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said a drone attack had caused fires at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, for the second consecutive day. Israel said it had launched targeted attacks on Tehran after Iranian missile fire set off sirens in Jerusalem and northern Israel overnight.

 

To help ease the surge in oil prices, the U.S. Treasury Department on Friday temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil that is already loaded onto vessels at sea, authorizing it to be sold to most countries. The license applies to oil loaded on vessels as of March 20 and is extended until April 19. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previewed the decision on Thursday and estimated that lifting the sanctions would add about 140 million barrels of crude to the oil market.

 

Here’s what else we’re covering:

Iran: Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, celebrated the Persian new year and the end of the holy month of Ramadan with a public statement, but he did not appear on video, as questions persisted about his physical condition. He has not been seen or heard in public since being named supreme leader, after an Israeli airstrike killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pentagon officials have said they believe he was seriously wounded. Read more ›

 

Israeli strike: The Israeli military said it had killed the spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ali Mohammed Naini, in a strike on Friday. A statement from the Guards Corps carried by Iranian state television confirmed he was killed, but did not offer details. The statement said the longtime general had led the force’s “cognitive war” against adversaries. The Israeli military described him as the group’s “main propagandist.”

 

New attacks: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates said on Friday they were intercepting drone and missile attacks, which Emirati and Bahraini officials said were coming from Iran. The authorities in Bahrain said that falling shrapnel had started a fire at a warehouse.

 

Death tolls: Iran’s U.N. ambassador said last week that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed since the start of the war. On Thursday, a Washington-based human rights group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,394 civilians had been killed. The number of Lebanese killed rose to more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday. At least 14 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13.