Trump Told Axios He Has 'a Big Decision Coming Up. Do I Want to Go In and Annihilate Them or Do I Not?' Within Hours, Iran Hit a Second Tanker in Hormuz, Aramco Told Europe It Gets No Crude in October, and Russia and China Vetoed the U.N. Sanctions Monitors.

President Trump said Thursday that he is nearing a decision on whether to resume large-scale strikes on Iran, framing the choice in the starkest terms he has used since major combat paused in April. "I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?" he told Axios reporter Barak Ravid in a phone interview. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me." He declined to say whether the decision would come before or after the November midterms.

Trump said he will use a meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next Tuesday to "find out where they are and how they are doing" before choosing a course. In early August, he held off on restarting major combat operations after Riyadh and Doha warned that Iran would answer by bombing Saudi oil and gas facilities. Since then the administration has suspended negotiations with Tehran, kept a naval blockade on Iranian ports, launched a fresh sanctions campaign and concentrated the military on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Treasury added to that Thursday, sanctioning BitBank, an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange it says is controlled by the financier Babak Zanjani and used to process payments from ships transiting the strait. The State Department separately offered up to $15 million for information that disrupts the Revolutionary Guard's financial networks.

Iran answered on the water. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center reported that a tanker was struck by an unknown projectile in the strait and caught fire; the blaze was put out and the crew were reported safe. Hours later UKMTO logged a second vessel hit by projectiles, and it disclosed that another tanker had been struck on September 16 while leaving the strait outbound. The Revolutionary Guard claimed the attack on a Togo-flagged ship it said was making an "illegal crossing." Earlier in the week, four Iranian drones and at least one missile hit a U.S.-contracted vessel with American personnel aboard, causing minor injuries including smoke inhalation. U.S. officials also confirmed to CBS News that Iranian forces recently downed at least two American MQ-1 surveillance drones.

The economic damage is spreading well beyond the Gulf. Saudi Aramco told European refiners Thursday that they will receive no crude in October after an attack on the kingdom's East-West pipeline, and it gave Indian customers the same notice, forcing buyers to scramble for replacement barrels at higher prices. Brent crude held near $104 a barrel, up from about $88 three weeks ago. Central banks in Japan, the United States and Europe all raised interest rates this week to counter inflation tied to the war, and French President Emmanuel Macron said France will host a G7 energy meeting in the coming weeks to coordinate on strategic reserves and "avoid unnecessary tensions" among allies. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said passage through Hormuz "must be unimpeded and toll-free."

At the United Nations, Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution that would have extended the panel of experts monitoring the sanctions on Iran that snapped back in September 2025 under the nuclear deal's enforcement mechanism. Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong warned against "double standards" and "political manipulation." Even so, the State Department approved visas for Iran's core U.N. delegation, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, with travel restrictions and a ban on buying luxury goods while in New York.

Inside Iran, the government staged a rally of more than 300,000 people who pledged to take military training and bear arms. Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh said more than 600,000 have registered for the "Janfaday-e Iran" program and that he expects a million. Pakistan's military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said Islamabad would defend Saudi Arabia "to any extent," including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, under the two countries' defense pact. And in Washington, Sen. Elissa Slotkin pressed Trump to confront Chinese President Xi Jinping when the two meet next week over evidence that Iran used satellite imagery from Chinese entities to target a Jordanian base in July, an attack that killed three U.S. service members.

The United States and Israel began the war on February 28 with the stated aims of destroying Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and weakening its proxy network. Major hostilities halted in early April. What Trump decides after Tuesday's meeting will determine whether that pause holds or ends.