Soon will be action, Trump says no Iran talks.

If you’ve filled up your car, checked a flight to the US, or watched petrol prices move lately, you’ve already felt the effect of the US-Iran standoff, even if you didn’t notice it. Kuwait sits right in the middle of this, between the Gulf’s shipping lanes and the US bases that dot the region.

So when US President Donald Trump says something new may be coming, people here tend to pay attention. On Wednesday, returning from a rally in South Carolina, he told reporters the US is not talking to Iran right now, and that “something one way or the other” would happen “fairly soon”.

This comes just two days after the US issued a security alert to Kuwait and 11 other countries, and it follows weeks of strikes, drone claims and shipping disruption across the Gulf.

What exactly did Trump say?

Speaking to reporters, Trump was blunt. “No, I think we’re not negotiating,” he said, adding that “we are going to have something one way or the other that’ll happen fairly soon.”

He pointed to timing, too. “Most people seem to think it’s after the election, and we’re going to see what happens,” he said, referring to the US midterm elections.

Earlier at the rally itself, Trump struck a slightly different note. He said the US could end its war with Iran immediately, but wants any outcome to actually hold. “It’ll end very soon. We could leave now, but we want to make sure it lasts for a long time,” he said.

He also claimed the US had already beaten Iran militarily and financially, and repeated that Tehran would “never have a nuclear weapon.”

So is a new strike actually coming?

That’s the part nobody can answer yet, including, it seems, people inside the US government. The New York Times reported that the US and Israeli militaries have built plans for renewed strikes on Iran, to be used after the midterm elections. The report was based on US officials and others briefed on the discussions.

But the newspaper was careful to say it’s still unclear whether Trump will actually approve those plans. He’s rejected a return to major combat several times already this year, as we covered when the <a href=