{"id":206297,"date":"2026-04-03T02:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-tells-iran-to-make-a-deal-before-it-is-too-late-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T02:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:12:26","slug":"trump-tells-iran-to-make-a-deal-before-it-is-too-late-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-tells-iran-to-make-a-deal-before-it-is-too-late-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump tells Iran to make a deal 'before it is too late' – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> on Thursday touted the destruction of a bridge in Iran\u2019s capital and warned leaders in the country to \u201cmake a deal before it is too late,\u201d as oil prices surged amid fears of a prolonged conflict.
Trump shared a video of Iran’s B1 bridge, reportedly the tallest in the region, collapsing after a large explosion and warned of \u201cmuch more to follow.\u201d<\/a> Iran’s foreign minister responded defiantly, saying attacks on civilian infrastructure “will not compel Iranians to surrender.” Iranian state media reported that two people were killed in the strike and that the bridge was still under construction.
The strike comes after Trump’s primetime address to the nation<\/a> in which he vowed to hit Iran \u201cextremely hard\u201d over the next two to three weeks. He also restated his threat to strike Iran\u2019s power plants if no deal materializes. \u201cWe’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,\u201d Trump said from the White House.
Brent crude oil was up 8%, just over $109 a barrel, as the three major stock indexes fell more than a percent at the start of trading. Oil prices moderated and stocks recovered later in the day, after Iranian state media reported that officials were drafting protocols for the passage of ships along the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, dozens of countries participated in a virtual meeting focused on reopening the vital trade route.
Swasti Singhai
Two-thirds of Americans believe that the United States should work to end its involvement in the Iran war quickly, according to a Reuters poll conducted March 27 to 29, even if ending the war means not achieving the goals outlined by the Trump administration.
The survey was taken among 1,021 people, with 60% of respondents also disapproving of U.S. military strikes on Iran. Polls taken since the beginning of the war have consistently shown a lack of majority support for U.S. military action.
A separate Reuters poll, published on March 2, found that one-in-four Americans approved of U.S. strikes on Iran, with one-in-four Republicans saying they believe Trump is too willing to use military force.
Trump’s approval rating also recently dropped to a new low of 36%.<\/a> In remarks made on Thursday, Trump said that the United States’ military objectives in Iran will be completed “very shortly.”
Swasti Singhai
Since the war in Iran started in February, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
Six of the 13 died in a strike in Kuwait on March 1. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at a press conference<\/a>\u00a0that they were killed when an Iranian missile escaped U.S. air defenses and hit a “tactical operations center that was fortified.”
Those killed in Kuwait include: Declan J. Coady, a 20-year-old sergeant from Iowa; Cody A. Khork, a 35-year-old captain from Florida; Nicole M. Amor, a 39-year-old sergeant from Minnesota; Noah L. Tietjens, a 42-year-old sergeant from Nebraska; Jeffrey O’Brien, a 45-year-old major from Iowa; and Robert M. Marzan, a 54-year-old chief warrant officer from California.
Another\u00a0service member<\/a>\u00a0killed in the war was injured in an attack in Saudi Arabia. He died from his injuries seven days later and was identified as Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky.
Another six service members were killed in Iraq on March 12th. They were crew members aboard a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft, which had been on a combat mission when it crashed. They included 33-year-old John Klinner from Alabama, 31-year-old Ariana Savino from Washington, 34-year-old Ashley Pruitt from Kentucky, 38-year-old Seth Koval from Indiana, and 30-year-old Curtis Angst and 28-year-old Tyler Simmons, both from Ohio.
According to U.S.-based human rights group HRANA<\/a>, there have been 1,212 military fatalities and 1,606 civilian fatalities since the beginning of the war. HRANA’s data is compiled through field reports, local contacts and open source materials, according to their website.
Cybele Mayes-Osterman
Pentagon chief\u00a0Pete Hegseth<\/a>\u00a0asked Gen. Randy George, the U.S. Army’s top officer, to step down from his position and immediately retire, according to a Pentagon official.
George had served as the chief of staff of the Army since 2023. Hegseth wanted someone who could better implement his and Trump’s vision in the Army, according to\u00a0CBS News<\/a>. George’s retirement was also reported by Reuters. The official confirmed to USA TODAY the accuracy of CBS’ report.
George’s removal comes as the U.S. military is engaged in a war with Iran and with a growing military presence, including elements of the Army, in the Middle East.\u00a0
Andrea Riquier
Wall Street closed virtually unchanged on Thursday as conflicting narratives about the Iran war kept investors uncertain.
Stocks were mostly higher, with the S&P 500 up 0.1% and the Nasdaq gaining 0.2%. The Dow closed down .1%, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield was fractionally lower, signaling some investors had been buying.
That was despite another daily jump in the oil price. Brent crude was up more than 7% to a little over $108 a barrel in the afternoon.
On Wednesday, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem\u00a0said that while the central bank usually sees events like the current oil spike as temporary, “supply shocks may be more likely to have a persistent impact on inflation and inflation expectations\u201d because of how long inflation has been above the Fed\u2019s 2% target.
U.S. consumers traveling for spring holidays or school vacations are paying, on average, $4.07 per gallon of gas, the highest in years.
Bart Jansen
Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbs Araghchi offered a flippant response to Trump\u2019s threat to bomb his country back to the Stone Age.
\u201cThere’s one striking difference between the present and the Stone Age: there was no oil or gas being pumped in the Middle East back then,\u201d Araghchi said on social media. \u201cAre POTUS and Americans who put him in office sure that they want to turn back the clock?\u201d he asked, referring to the acronym for president of the United States.
Reuters
Emergency medical needs in Iran are rising exponentially, and stocks of trauma kits and other gear could run low if the war persists, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and \u200bRed Crescent \u200bSocieties delegation there said Thursday.
More than 1,900 people\u00a0have been killed\u00a0since the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, and more than 21,000 injured, according to the agency, the only humanitarian group working across the country. Other estimates are higher.
Maria Martinez, of the International Federation of Red Cross and \u200bRed Crescent \u200bSocieties, told Reuters three of the agency’s own workers had died on duty, including one during an airstrike on March 31 that hit a medical clinic in Zanjan province. She did not attribute blame for the killings.
“Our concern is really how the humanitarian needs are escalating so rapidly and (over) our ability to bring all the support into the country,” Martinez said.
Christopher Cann
A top Iranian leader said striking civilian infrastructure “will not compel Iranians to surrender,” after President Trump on social media celebrated a strike on a bridge in Tehran and threatened more attacks.
“Striking civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender,” Iran Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said in a post on X<\/a>. “It only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray.”
He added: “Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover: damage to America’s standing.”
Christopher Cann
Iran cannot maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz, said the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas, adding that the EU must increase its naval presence in the region.
“This waterway is a global public good. Iran cannot be allowed to charge countries a bounty to let ships pass. International law doesn\u2019t recognize pay-to-pass schemes,” Kallas said in a post on X<\/a>.
The United Kingdom hosted a virtual meeting<\/a> of at least 40 other countries focused on the critical trade route, which Iran has closed for more than a month. Tehran has sought to exert complete control over the strait and has recently begun imposing tolls on ships benefitting countries not allied with the U.S. or Israel, Bloomberg reported<\/a>.
“Today, we looked at diplomatic, economic, and security measures to restore safe passage, alongside working with the shipping industry,” Kallas said of the meeting. “The EU\u2019s Aspides naval mission has already assisted 1,700 ships in the Red Sea and must be scaled up. We cannot afford to lose another critical trade route.”
Christopher Cann
President Donald Trump on Thursday posted a video of what he described as an explosion that destroyed Iran’s largest bridge and said more attacks could follow if Iran does not make a deal to end the war.
“The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again \u2014 Much more to follow!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/a>
He added: “IT IS TIME FOR IRAN TO MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!”
Christopher Cann
Iran will issue two protocols for the passage of commercial ships and military vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in the coming weeks, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the country\u2019s state broadcaster.
“The draft plan is being considered by the Iranian parliament and government,” the state broadcaster reported.
Christopher Cann
Iran was\u00a0drafting a protocol\u00a0with\u00a0Oman\u00a0for traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,\u00a0the official IRNA news agency reported, citing Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
At the same time,\u00a0Britain said that about 40 countries are\u00a0discussing joint action plans to reopen the critical waterway, which has remained under Iranian control for more than a month, surging global energy prices.
Christopher Cann
Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, said he spoke with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, about the ongoing war and emphasized the need for diplomacy.
“We discussed the situation in Iran and the Middle East. A ceasefire and a diplomatic solution are urgently needed,” Stubb said in a post on X<\/a>. “I emphasized the need to end the strikes on neighboring countries and restore freedom of navigation in the Strait Hormuz. Despite the disagreements, it is important to maintain dialogue.”
Andrea Riquier
Stocks reversed course to trade slightly higher mid-morning on Thursday, April 2. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield dipped 3 basis points, signaling investor interest. Bond yields move in the opposite direction as prices.
Brent crude was trading 5% higher, near $107 a barrel, well off earlier highs. The VIX index of expected volatility was up only 1%, also a big retreat from highs from earlier in the morning.
Andrea Riquier
Stocks slumped as oil churned higher following President Trump\u2019s Wednesday evening speech promising to escalate hostilities in the near term.
Brent crude oil was up 8% as Wall Street opened for trading Thursday, just over $109 a barrel. Meanwhile, the 10-year U.S. Treasury note added 4 basis points to trade near 4.36%, likely a sign investors are expecting higher inflation, which would erode the value of bonds.
The three major stock indexes were all down more than a percent at the start of trading: the broad S&P 500 lost 1.3%, the Dow slid more than 600 points, or 1.3%, and the Nasdaq, which is made up of more growth-oriented companies than the other two, plunged 1.7%.
Gas prices remained elevated, with the national average at $4.071 a gallon, according to GasBuddy\u2019s real-time tracker.
Higher prices aren\u2019t going to disappear any time soon. \u201cWe continue to assume a higher oil price equilibrium of 90\u201395 (dollars) per barrel in 2026, versus 65 (dollars) prior to the crisis,\u201d said Pooja Kumra, senior European & UK rates strategist for TD Securities, in an investor note on Thursday.
Bart Jansen
Oil prices climbed nearly 7% on Thursday, April 2, after Trump said military strikes on Iran would continue.
Brent crude futures\u00a0were up $8.34, or 8.2%, to $109.50 per barrel by noon in England. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up $9.23, or 9.2%, at $109.35 per barrel, matching the highest price since March 9.
Markets reacted to the absence of any “clear mention of ceasefire or diplomatic engagement” in the speech, Priyanka Sachdeva, senior market analyst at Phillip Nova, told Reuters.
Bart Jansen
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth posted a succinct phrase to social media after Trump\u2019s speech that echoed the president’s message.
\u201cBack to the Stone Age,\u201d Hegseth wrote on X<\/a>.
Trump had said during his primetime speech April 1 that if peace talks with Iran are unsuccessful, the United States will \u201chit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks\u201d and \u201cbring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.\u201d
Bart Jansen
France\u2019s President Emmanuel Macron said it would be unrealistic to reopen the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> with a military operations, after President Donald Trump challenged other countries to pursue that course.
“This was never the option we have supported because it is unrealistic,\u201d Macron told reporters during a trip to South Korea. “It would take forever, and would expose all those who go through the strait to risks from the guardians of the revolution but also ballistic missiles.\u201d
About 20% of the world\u2019s oil flows through the strait.<\/a> But traffic has been greatly reduced during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran because of Tehran\u2019s retaliatory missile launches and mine-laying.
Macron has said for days<\/a> France wouldn\u2019t participate in a forced reopening of the strait. He has worked on establishing free passage once the hostilities have stopped by talking to Iran.
“What we say from the beginning is that this strait must be reopened because it is strategic for energy flows, fertilizers and international trade, but that it can only be done in consultation with\u00a0Iran,” Macron said.
Bart Jansen
Iran\u2019s armed forces responded to Trump\u2019s speech with a warning to the United States and Israel of “more crushing, broader and more destructive” attacks to come.
The war will continue until the “permanent regret and surrender” of\u00a0Iran’s enemies, according to a spokesperson for the\u00a0Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya central headquarters, Ebrahim Zolfaqari, carried in state media.
Mathieu Rosemain and John Irish, Reuters
France suspects a pro-Iranian group known as HAYI to be behind a foiled attack on Bank of America’s Paris offices, its anti-terrorism prosecutor said on Wednesday, while stressing the link has not yet been formally established.
HAYI, which stands for Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, had posted a video on social media on March 23 targeting Jewish interests and communities in France and Europe, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement to Reuters. It added the video specifically named Bank of America’s Paris headquarters.
The group – unknown until a spate of attacks across Europe on U.S., Israeli and Jewish targets for which it claimed responsibility – appears new. Security sources say it appears to be using a model previously linked to Iran to recruit criminal groups or petty criminals to carry out attacks.
Four suspects, three minors and one adult, were formally placed under investigation, the prosecutor’s office said. A fifth person was released for lack of sufficient evidence.
Investigators established through CCTV footage, phone data and police interviews that the adult had recruited the three teenagers between the nights of March 26 and 27, paying them between 500 and 1,000 euros ($580-$1,160) to plant the device, light it and film the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.
All four suspects denied terrorist intent, though the minors acknowledged knowing the target was not a residential building, it said.
Zac Anderson
The U.S. military campaign against Iran will continue in the coming weeks, with major blows still to be delivered, Trump said in his address Wednesday.<\/a>
“We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” Trump said, a threat\u00a0he’s issued before<\/a>\u00a0on the world stage.
The president’s comments indicate the conflict could escalate, at least in the short term. Trump continued to threaten attacks on Iranian power plants “if there is no deal.” At the same time, Trump said America would “very shortly” achieve all of its military objectives.
Trump talked about meeting with the families of soldiers killed in the war and said \u201cnow we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives.\u201d
\u201cWe are going to finish the job,\u201d he added.
Terry Collins
In a lengthy open letter addressed to the “people of the United States,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday denied his nation posed a threat to the United States and defended Iran’s actions in the ongoing war, citing it as “legitimate self-defense.”
In the translated\u00a0four-page letter posted on X<\/a>, Pezeshkian wrote that the Iranian people “harbor no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries.”
“This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness \u2013 not a temporary political stance,” Pezeshkian said. “For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts.”
Pezeshkian’s letter came hours before President\u00a0Trump’s Wednesday night addresses on the status of the war.<\/a> Trump has said his administration’s goal is to ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

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President Donald Trump on Thursday touted the destruction of a bridge in Iran\u2019s capital and warned leaders in the country to \u201cmake a deal before it is too late,\u201d as oil prices surged amid fears of a prolonged conflict.Trump shared a video of Iran’s B1 bridge, reportedly the tallest in the region, collapsing after a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}