President Donald Trump said Tehran does not have to make a “deal” with Washington to end ⁠the conflict.

But, he does want to see Iran “put into the stone ⁠ages,” without the ability to soon acquire a nuclear ‌weapon before the was comes to an end.

“Then ​we’ll leave,” he said.

An American journalist has been kidnapped in Baghdad and Iraqi security forces are pursuing her captors.

The journalist was identified as freelancer Shelly Kittleson by one of the outlets she worked for. The Iraqi interior ministry said in a statement that a foreign journalist had been kidnapped, without giving more details about the person’s identity.

US president Donald Trump claimed the war will be over in “two to three weeks”.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office he said the price of oil will also come “tumbling down” when he leaves Iran.

“All I have to do is leave Iran, and we’ll be doing that very soon, and they’ll become tumbling down,” he insisted.

He added: “Stock prices were up today, almost to a record, because they know two things. Number one, we have a safe country. We had to take a little detour because we had a madman named Khomeini, who, sadly, is no longer with us. And we had regime change already.

“We’ve knocked out one regime, then we knocked out the second regime. Now we have a group of people that’s very that are very different. They’re much more reasonable, I think, much more much less radicalized.

“It’s a we’ve had regime change, we’re dealing with people that are much more rational, and it’s very, it’s amazing what we’ve done, we had to make a little detour.”

Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East in the ​Iran war, which began when the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28.

According to US-based rights group HRANA 3,492 people have been killed since the war erupted. It said 1,574 of those were civilians, including at least 236 children.

The group says its ⁠data comes from field reports, local contacts, medical and emergency sources, civil society networks, open-source materials and official statements.

US president Donald Trump made the “right decision” to “wipe it out”, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said defending the reasons why the US went to war.

In a video posted to X by The White House he explained it was the “last best chance” the US had at eliminating the “threat” of nuclear weapons in Iran.

Explaining why the US attacked Iran he said: “Iran wants to have nuclear weapons, of that there is zero doubt.

“If what they truly wanted, which is what they claim, is nuclear energy, they could have nuclear energy like all the other countries in the world have it and that is you import the fuel and you build reactors above ground. That’s not what Iran has done.

“They built their facilities and the reactors deep in mountains away from the public glare,” he added.

He said Iran was “on the verge” of having “so many missiles and so many drones” that would have stopped future intervention.

Mr Rubio said :“Under no circumstances can a country run by radicle Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future ever possess nuclear weapons.”

The US military has started flying B-52 bombers over Iran, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

General Dan Caine said the warplanes were focused on destroying supply chains that fed Iran’s missile, drone and ship building facilities, to stop Iran replacing the munitions, The New York Times reported.

However, despite the ongoing US-Israeli bombing, Tehran is still able to retaliate, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters.

“They will shoot some missiles; we will shoot them down,” Mr Hegseth said at the Pentagon.

President Donald Trump said ⁠US military ⁠action against ⁠Iran ​is “coming to ⁠an ‌end,” in an interview with NBC News.

“We’re doing great,” ‌Trump said. “And it’s coming to an end.”

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a second-term low, a sign of “profound problems” in the Republican’s coalition, a top pollster argues.

As of Monday, President Trump had an average of 39.9 percent approval, and a net approval rating of -16.7, according to composite measures from polling expert Nate Silver. The share of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump also hit a second-term high, at 46.7 percent, Silver found.

The pollster attributed the president’s dismal approval rating, which has fallen by nearly 5 percent this month, to the ongoing war with Iran and the resulting spike in gas prices.