There is a sound a negotiation makes when it has stopped being a negotiation. President Trump described it Wednesday from the Oval Office, and he described it twice, because he wanted it understood. Tap, tap, tap.
That was the noise of Iran, in his telling — not signing, not refusing, just tapping. And the President had decided he was done listening to it.
“We’re going to be attacking them, attacking them very hard,” he told reporters. The justification was a helicopter, the Army Apache that went down near the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the week, and Trump reached for it plainly. “Based on the helicopter, I guess we have the right to do that.”
He wanted no one to miss what came next.
“We hit them hard yesterday. We’re going to hit them again hard today, in case you miss it, in case you don’t turn on your television set, and we’ll see what happens with the deal.”
Note the construction. The strikes and the deal, in the same breath, as if they were not in tension at all — as if bombing were simply another form of correspondence.
He says the talks are still alive. He has been at this a while.
“I’ve been working with Iran for a number of months,” he said. “They should sign the deal. It’s a good deal.” The frustration of a man who believes he is offering something reasonable to people who will not take it: “I don’t know what they’re doing.”
And then the tapping again. “It was just tap, tap, tap.”
Later, he would not rule out going after the things that keep a country running — the power plants, the bridges, the infrastructure that is not military but civilian. He framed it as exasperation rather than strategy.
“They’re tapping and tapping, and they say, ‘All right, let’s give them a couple of more days.'” The days, one gathers, are running short. “They’re tapping because it’s a meaningful paper.”
Somewhere, there is a document that both sides agree matters.
Whether it gets signed before the next thing gets hit is, by the President’s own account, anyone’s guess.
BREAKING: President Trump says he is going to continue bombing Iran "very hard" after it shot down a U.S. helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz.
"We're going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard."
"I've been working with Iran for a number of months, and they should… pic.twitter.com/tlO6S10uyo
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 10, 2026
