Trump Says US Could Keep Iran's Oil Like Venezuela Deal, Predicts War's End After Midterms

President Donald Trump said Sunday the United States could stay in Iran and "keep the oil," using the same language he applied to an August 2026 deal that gave Washington control over roughly a fifth of Venezuela's oil reserves, according to the Jerusalem Post and Business Recorder.

Trump made the remarks at the Irish Open golf championship in Doonbeg, Ireland, where he is traveling for meetings and to watch golf. "We'll ultimately get out [of Iran], unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela," he said, adding that US revenue from the Venezuela arrangement has "paid for the war many times."

He also repeated his prediction that the Iran war would end this year, "possibly just after" the November midterms, and said gasoline prices would "drop like a rock" once the fighting stops, per the Jerusalem Post and TBS News. Trump claimed Iran is "calling constantly" for peace talks, an assertion Tehran has previously denied making.

What the Venezuela deal actually is

Trump is holding up Venezuela as the model, but the details of that arrangement are murkier than "the US owns 20% of the oil." NPR's national security podcast Sources & Methods reported that under the deal, the US government is partnering with Venezuela's second-largest private oil company, giving Washington what the White House says is majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of reserves.

NPR correspondent John Otis noted two complications largely absent from other coverage of Trump's Sunday comments: the head of the Venezuelan company partnering with the US has been investigated for money laundering in Switzerland, and the US government does not typically get directly involved in oil production. Otis said Washington hasn't done so since World War II, and that the deal is being run through a newly designated Pentagon office, though the exact name and origin of that office were not specified in the reporting. Neither the Jerusalem Post, TBS News, nor Business Recorder mentioned the money-laundering investigation or the unusual Pentagon role when reporting Trump's Iran comments.

For anyone taking Trump's "it paid for the war many times over" claim at face value, this context matters. No public accounting of Venezuela oil revenue versus war costs has been cited by any of these outlets, and the arrangement itself remains new enough that its long-term financial performance is unproven.

The Hormuz picture is more contested than "cleared"

On the military side, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper announced Thursday that US forces cleared Iranian sea mines from the Strait of Hormuz's internationally recognized shipping lanes, according to Breitbart. Cooper called it a "major milestone," and Breitbart reported the US naval blockade has kept Iranian oil exports at zero since mid-July.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency issued a verified warning late Saturday that a vessel was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to Fox News. UKMTO said the crew's condition and the extent of any damage were not immediately known, and did not identify the vessel or who fired at it. That single incident doesn't undo the mine-clearing operation Cooper described, but it does show the waterway isn't fully secured just because the mines are gone.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian pushed back hard on the US pressure campaign Saturday, writing on social media that Iran "won't surrender" and accusing Washington of waging war on civilian infrastructure, food supplies, and livelihoods, per Fox News. "If Americans are warriors, let them face our valiant military forces," he wrote.

The oil market backdrop

All of this comes as a recent attack on a Saudi oil pipeline has already rattled crude markets, with traders expecting prices to rise again Monday, according to the Jerusalem Post, TBS News, and Business Recorder, all citing the same wire report. None of the sources identify who carried out the pipeline attack.

A reasonable critic could look at Trump's comments and see a president openly floating an extended US military and economic footprint inside a foreign country to extract its natural resources, the exact kind of "blood for oil" arrangement critics have accused Washington of pursuing in past Middle East conflicts. That concern deserves to be stated plainly rather than dismissed, especially given that the Venezuela template involves a partner executive under a foreign money-laundering investigation and a Pentagon office running oil operations for the first time since World War II.

What's also true is that Trump has not announced any formal Iran oil arrangement, unlike Venezuela, where a signed deal already exists. His Sunday remarks were framed as one possible outcome, not policy. Whether Congress would have any say over a long-term US oil presence in Iran, and whether the Venezuela deal is actually generating the revenue Trump claims, remain open questions none of these sources have answered.