Trump Muses on Future Iran Strike With ‘Mother of All Bombs’

President Donald Trump declined to rule out using a weapon known as the “Mother of all Bombs” on Iran after the US midterm elections.

“Well the mother of all bombs is not nuclear,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax broadcast on Thursday night. “It’s not nuclear at all, just an extremely large bomb. It’s like a tiny nuclear bomb. But the mother of all bombs is one big bomb, but it’s not nuclear,” Trump said.

“I wouldn’t use nuclear. We don’t have to,” he said.

Trump has previously ruled out striking Iran before the elections on Nov. 3, which will decide control of Congress. Yet in the interview, he mused about possible attacks after the vote.

CNN reported earlier this week that the US has developed strike plans that could include using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, citing multiple officials familiar with the matter. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, the weapon was dropped on Islamic State positions in Afghanistan.

The MOAB is a thermobaric weapon, also known as a “vacuum bomb,” that sucks all the oxygen out of the surrounding air to set off the blast. This force can rupture lungs.

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The war with Iran has turned into a major flashpoint in the elections, cited by voters for driving up the price of retail gasoline and diesel in a campaign that has centered on the economy and the cost of living.

Energy prices have remained stubbornly high despite the president’s campaign to ease them, including by cutting an energy deal with Russia, easing sanctions, and offering waivers on certain types of diesel fuel. Several Republican candidates in swing states have broken from Trump to say the war, which began in late February, must come to a swift conclusion.

Yet while Trump has frequently said the Iran conflict would soon end, it nevertheless persists.

Trump in the interview was asked why not simply declare victory over the Islamic Republic and end the military campaign. He responded that he could, “but we might have to be back there in a year.”

The president said the US was weighing a future strike against Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain and its tunnel complex buried deep under the surface. “We may have to go there,” Trump said, and “take a shot at that one.” It’s unclear if a weapon like the MOAB would be effective against the heavily-fortified site, just south of Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

At the same time, Trump maintained that the US didn’t plan to deploy troops in Iran. “No, I don’t see that,” he said.

“The Iran war will be over very soon,” Trump reiterated. “It’s going to end very soon, one way or the other. It’s going to end.”