US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was “an hour away” from approving a fresh military strike on Iran before Gulf states urged Washington to give diplomacy more time.
Speaking to the reporters
at the White House, Trump said several Gulf allies, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, contacted his administration after hearing that the US was ready to move ahead with the attack.
“I was an hour away. We were all set to go… it would have been happening right now,” he said.
President Trump said Tuesday he was “an hour way” from making the decision to strike Iran on Monday, but that U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf requested he not go ahead with the plan.
The president said he would allow a “limited period of time” for talks to continue, saying… pic.twitter.com/IkqLF79gA8
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 19, 2026
The US president said regional negotiators told him that progress had been made in recent talks with Tehran and asked him to delay military action.
Trump made the comments as he was briefing the media about the progress on the ballroom coming up at the East Wing of the White House, at the site as workers went about their construction job at the highly fortified structure.
“We would probably not be talking about a beautiful ballroom today. We’d be talking about that. And no, we were where I had made the decision. So they called up. They had heard I made the decision. They said, “Sir, could you give us a couple more days because we think they’re being reasonable,” Trump said.
The US President said the negotiators said they had made a lot of progress in talks with Iran over the last two days.
“They called over the last two days to say they made a lot of progress. Because we have them negotiating with us. And primarily, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, a little bit of Bahrain, and some of the others. And we have them negotiating with them. We’re all working together. It’s like a team,” Trump said.
Trump said he’s giving Iran “a limited period of time” to make a deal because we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
“There’s no question in my mind that they’d use it, there’s no question—and I deal with these people. They’re extremely radicalised,” he said.
(With inputs from PTI)
