Hegseth vows a National Guard 'surge' in Washington as Trump's cabinet signals it could 'finish the job' in Iran

President Trump convened his cabinet at the White House on 27 May with the unresolved US war on Iran as the central topic. Asked about National Guard numbers in the capital, Trump said: "Keep them, and don't lower the number, either. Somebody said, 'Oh, are there less?' I said, 'I hope not, but don't lower the number, if you don't mind.'" Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied, "We're going to surge this summer too."

Turning to Iran, Hegseth said the US had imposed a "world-class blockade" on the country. "They may have missiles, but they can't build more right now, and they can't build more drones right now, and they can't build more ships, and so they came and cried uncle to talk," he said. He told Trump that intelligence showed Iran's economy was "hurting big time," and that "whether it is through the efforts of your negotiators that ensure that they never have a new weapon, or we have to go back to the War Department to finish the job, we're prepared to do that."

Rubio struck a parallel line, saying "the bottom line is Iran's never going to have a nuclear weapon" and calling Tehran "the world's leading sponsor of terrorism." He insisted "diplomacy is always the first option" and said the administration would "see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made," while reminding Trump, "you have other options available to you if that doesn't work."

Pressed on rising US gas prices linked to the war, Trump dismissed the concern, saying the country was "producing right now more oil by double than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined" and adding, "We don't need oil, we don't need the straits, we don't need anything." He had previously warned that "a whole civilization will die" if Tehran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the US had opened lease sales on public land for further drilling, arguing royalties would flow to citizens, school districts and states; climate activists and Indigenous communities have warned that expanded drilling could deepen the climate crisis and damage fragile ecosystems.

Trump described Iran as militarily spent -- "Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, everything's gone and they're negotiating on fumes" -- and said, "Maybe we have to go back and finish it. Maybe we don't right now." He said he preferred to call the campaign a "conflict" rather than a "war," and brushed off electoral pressure, repeating "I don't care about the midterms" and saying his Iran actions were "for the world, I'm not just doing it for us."

The meeting also served as an achievements showcase. Vice-President JD Vance detailed a White House fraud task force, calling fraud "a crime with two victims" -- taxpayers and the people cut out of programs -- and citing investigations into scams across education, housing and Medicaid. Trump said the task force was "waging war on waste, fraud, theft, and abuse like nobody's ever seen before," pointed to additional charges in a federal social-services spending case in Minnesota, and claimed Social Security could be shored up "by just the numbers of fraudulent people." He touted prescription-drug prices at "a fraction of the price" and "the lowest prices anywhere in the world," and opened the session by claiming "zero illegal aliens" had entered over the past 12 months and that murder rates had fallen.

The session had been trailed a day earlier as a rare full-cabinet meeting convened after US strikes on Iran, and it followed weeks in which Trump's "forever cease-fire" with Tehran stalled without resolution.