Just before the polls closed Tuesday night, President Trump gave a short telephone interview to the Financial Times’ Edward Luce in which he claimed that the U.S. has no immediate plans to strike Iran. “We seem to be getting everything we want,” Trump claimed. Asked about strong hints by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there would be an attack later this week, Trump said: “I’m ready, we’re ready. We’re locked and loaded if we need to go, but there may be no reason for it.”

The U.S. was not “really” fighting Iran, he claimed further. “We’re not really in a war, because we hit them with the B2 bombers and wiped out their nuclear potential incapacity [sic]. We then hit them again, Epic Fury, etc…. But if you think about it, we haven’t really had a war with them in a long time, six months, maybe more.”

Trump said indirect negotiations with Iran about the fate of its roughly 1,000-pound stockpile of enriched uranium were ongoing. “Even though it’s under hundreds of tons of rock, I would say that I’m not happy that it will be there,” Trump said. “So it’s one of the things that we do talk to them about. But you know, we’re having discussions, and we’ll see how that all works out.”

Luce noted, however, that “should Trump’s optimism about Republican prospects be misplaced, his tone on the stand-off with Iran could abruptly alter, as it has before.”

Later, Trump told Fox News that the Iran war may have been a factor in the election outcome. “I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time, people understood the importance of what I’ve done with Iran,” Trump said in a telephone interview with Fox News. He said voters were probably unwilling to accept the short-term consequences of higher petrol prices. Trump added that he was unlikely to change his cabinet.