President Trump told reporters in Ankara on Wednesday that he believes the ceasefire with Iran has collapsed, capping a NATO summit trip that ended with the U.S. and Iran trading fire overnight. "I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum," Trump said, according to NPR. He did not rule out further talks toward a permanent end to the conflict.

The remarks came as Trump wrapped up a two-day NATO summit in Turkey and prepared to take questions at a closing press conference. The sequence that preceded his comments moved quickly. Three commercial vessels were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, July 7. The U.S. responded with strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets and reimposed oil sanctions on Iran, according to CNN. Washington said the strikes were retaliation for prior Iranian aggression. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it answered with missiles and drones aimed at Kuwait and Bahrain. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. military launched its strikes while Trump was still meeting with NATO leaders in Turkey — the retaliatory cycle unfolded in real time against the summit's schedule, not after it.

The ceasefire Trump now says is over had a specific, dated lineage. Reuters reported on May 28 that Iran and the U.S. had reached a deal to extend a ceasefire for 60 days, contingent on Trump's approval, citing four sources familiar with the negotiations. That reporting followed an earlier round of U.S.-Iran strikes after Trump publicly dismissed a separate report of a Hormuz-related deal. A Truth Social post attributed to Trump's account referenced a "double sided CEASEFIRE" with a stated duration of two weeks, though the post carries no clear timestamp tying it to the current sequence of events. Taken together, the record shows a ceasefire framework that had already been extended, tested and publicly disputed by Trump before Wednesday's collapse.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, speaking at the summit, said the new U.S. attack on Iran was "absolutely necessary." His comment lands against a broader alliance backdrop that Reuters flagged on July 3: European leaders arrived in Ankara hoping to set aside friction with Trump over Iran policy and Greenland, aiming for a summit that stayed on message rather than reopening transatlantic disputes. Whether that goal survived Wednesday's exchange of fire is now an open question the alliance will have to answer in its own statements going forward.

The Ankara gathering also produced a bilateral thread that has nothing to do with Iran but complicates the broader U.S.-Turkey-NATO picture. Trump met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday and discussed a potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, despite an existing congressional ban tied to Ankara's earlier purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system. The White House video library lists Trump's arrival at the presidential palace ahead of the summit, dated July 7, running just under 31 minutes — a marker of the same visit that produced both the Erdogan meeting and the ceasefire remarks.

The current strikes are not the first time this administration has framed military action against Iran in maximalist terms. In March, the White House announced what it called Operation Epic Fury, describing the campaign as designed to "crush" the Iranian regime and end its nuclear threat. That release predates the ceasefire Reuters reported in May, meaning the diplomatic track and the military one have run on parallel, occasionally contradictory timelines for months. A NATO transcript from a March 26 press conference also referenced Iranian missile strikes on Turkey itself and drone attacks on British bases in Cyprus, suggesting the regional spillover Trump's team is now responding to did not begin this week.

For officials tracking the durability of any U.S.-Iran arrangement, the pattern worth watching is the gap between formal ceasefire language and battlefield conduct. The May extension was reported as pending Trump's approval — a conditionality that left the deal's legal and political status ambiguous even before Tuesday's Hormuz attacks. Trump's Wednesday comments did not formally terminate anything in writing; he offered a personal assessment ("I think it's over") while leaving the door open to renewed talks. That distinction matters for allies and markets alike, since a presidential opinion delivered to reporters in Ankara carries different weight than a formal notification of withdrawal from an agreement whose exact terms have never been fully public.

The immediate operational picture — strikes on Iranian targets, missile and drone fire toward Kuwait and Bahrain, attacks on commercial shipping in one of the world's busiest oil corridors — puts Gulf state security postures back in the spotlight NATO had hoped to avoid discussing at length in Ankara. Rutte's "absolutely necessary" framing suggests the alliance is not distancing itself from the U.S. strikes, even as individual European governments weigh how the renewed conflict affects their own Gulf shipping and energy exposure heading into the second half of 2026.