"We want to take this card from the Iranians," a senior U.S. official said.

We're going to be blockading [the Strait of Hormuz]. It'll take a little while, but it'll be effective pretty soon.

They wanna have nuclear weapons. They're not gonna have nuclear weapons. I've been saying that for thirty years. I would never allow that to happen before I was in politics, and that country will not have nuclear weapons.

Most countries shouldn't be allowed to have, but that country will not have nuclear weapons.

They came in like they have the cards but they don't have the cards.

The whole place is obliterated. The whole place is gone.

We're very disappointed with NATO. We're very, very disappointed that they didn't come.

Now they want to come, and they want to help with the Strait of Hormuz, and it won't take long to clean it out.

We're going to clean out the strait, and they'll be able to use the strait in not too long a distance.

We had a very intensive negotiation.

And toward the end, it got very friendly and we got just about every point we needed, except for the fact that they refused to give up their nuclear ambition.

That is the most important point by far.

As Bibi Netanyahu said, we're the big brother and Israel is the small brother. It's been a very effective team.

We're putting on a complete blockade. We are not going to let Iran make money on selling oil to people they like or not selling it to people they don’t like.

It’s going to be all or nothing.

You saw what we did with Venezuela; it will be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.

We have highly sophisticated underwater minesweepers, which are the latest and the greatest, but we're also bringing in more traditional minesweepers.

The UK and a couple of other countries are sending minesweepers.

We fly over there at will, can take out anything we want.

As you know last week I said we're going to strongly consider knocking out their power plants and the rest of their bridges. We took down their big bridge.

They haven't left the bargaining table.

I predict they come back and they give us everything we want. I want with everything.

I don't want 90%, I don't want 95%. I want everything! They have no cards.

158 ships are at the bottom of the sea — good and new ones.

I could take out Iran in one day.

I took out one bridge just to show them because they went public with a statement that wasn't true.

I was thinking about calling it the Gulf of Trump, and I decided not to do it.

I think that one maybe wouldn't have worked out. I'm not so sure.

But I was thinking about it's gonna be called the Gulf of Trump.

You know I'm kidding. The fake news will have a headline tomorrow.

They fired 101 missiles in one day at the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, one of the beauties of the world, one of the great beauties of the world.

These things are going more than 2,000 miles an hour.

Out of 101 missiles, 101 were shot down like nothing and are now at the bottom of the sea, the remnants of them.

As far as China is concerned, China can send their ships to us, China can send their ships to Venezuela.

We told them, buy from Venezuela. We have a lot of overcapacity, we'd sell them, and we'll probably sell it for even less money.

I hear news reports about China giving the shoulder missiles.

I doubt they would do that because I have a relationship and I think they wouldn't do that, but maybe they did a little bit at the beginning, but I don't think they would anymore.

But if we catch them doing that they get a 50% tariff.

The only to thing left really is their water, which would be very devastating to hit.

I would hate to do it, but it's their water, their desalination plants, and their electric generating plants.

We could have them all down. And I mean, down like you couldn't have electricity for ten years because it takes you ten years to build those plants from scratch. You'd never probably be able to build them again.

I think we pretty much maxed out other than those few items. We still have some plants left.

We have to reexamine NATO because they weren't there for us.

I've said this for 25 years, they weren't there for us, and they won't be there for us.

This is just a military operation. This is not a hard thing for us. We are so much more powerful.

"Any erroneous maneuver will trap the enemy in deadly whirlpools in the Strait," said the IRGC Navy Command.