Did Trump once say Obama would start war with Iran due to his inability to negotiate?

In February 2026, online users claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump once said the sitting president would “start a war with Iran” because he had “no ability to negotiate.” Users resurfaced the years-old remarks as a video or text quotes amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

For example, on Feb. 18, an X user posted (archived) a video showing Trump making the comments. The user’s joking caption read, “Donald Trump with a message for Donald Trump: ‘Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.’” Other users shared the clip or quote on Bluesky (archived), Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok (archived) and X (archived). 

In short, Trump truly said these words in November 2011. He was referring to then-President Barack Obama, whose administration sought to ensure Iran did not develop nuclear weapons.

At the time, Trump tweeted (archived) his concerns (archived) about Iran. He also shared comments similar to the video, alleging Obama would try to start a war to win the 2012 election.

In September 2013, long after Obama won the 2012 election and had not started a war with Iran, Trump tweeted (archived), “Remember what I previously said–Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.”

During Trump’s first term in office, he withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Obama-negotiated nuclear accord with Iran. The Associated Press reported Trump’s move “deepened his isolation on the world stage and revived doubts about American credibility.”

Snopes contacted the White House by email to ask if it wished to comment on users’ posts that resurfaced the video and comments. In response, White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump “has been clear that the Iranian regime should make a deal or it will be very traumatic” for them, but did not address Trump’s 2011 remarks.

Full Trump video from 2011

On Nov. 16, 2011, Trump’s official YouTube channel published the video circulating online, titled “From The Desk Of Donald Trump: Iran and Occupy Wall Street.” In the months or years that followed, a user changed the video‘s visibility to “private.” An archived version of the page from December 2011 displayed around 13,000 views. At the time, Trump’s channel displayed as “trump” at youtube.com/user/trump — a website address that led to the official channel for The Trump Organization, a real estate conglomerate owned by the Trump family, in 2026.

The Roll Call Factbase Videos YouTube channel hosted a 2018 repost of the 2011 Trump video.

In the video, Trump spoke about Obama and Iran, as well as Occupy Wall Street, a late 2011 movement protesting economic inequality and the corruption of corporate law. The following is a transcript of his remarks (emphasis ours):

Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective. So the only way he figures that he’s going to get reelected, and as sure as you’re sitting there, is to start a war with Iran. Now, I’m more militant and more militaristic than the president. I believe in strength. But to start a war in order to get elected, and I believe that’s going to happen, would be an outrage.

Iran can be taken down in many ways. Their population is in turmoil. They look at what’s happening in Syria and other countries where it looked like it was an impossibility. And it looks like that one is going to collapse also. So Iran can be taken.

I would never take the military card off the table and it’s possible that it’ll have to be used because Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but you’ve gotta exhaust other possibilities. And we’re in a great position to do it. They know, or they at least must know, that they’re in a little bit of heat because there’s a lot of pressure to attack. This is a great time to negotiate. Unfortunately, we have a president that doesn’t know the first thing about negotiation. We have a real problem in the White House. So, I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic?

Well, they finally cleared out the protesters and it’s about time.

It’s great that the protesters are no longer allowed to put up their tents and have a lot of fun or whatever they were having. I don’t mind protesting, but you know what? You have to have a point of view. You go down there and they’re basically protesting everything. They don’t even know what they’re protesting. Some of them are real people that have real and legitimate complaints.

Others are down there for dating purposes, for having a good time, and maybe it’s working. And then some are down there for bad reasons, for evil reasons, and they started getting more and more of them. So, it’s great that it got broken up. It’ll probably come back in smaller forms but they’ve gotta know what they’re protesting first. You have some very good people there, but you also have some real lemons.

So, congratulations. It’s sort of over for now. Let’s see what happens in the future. But tents and living like that it should not…

For further reading about foreign policy, we previously reported that Trump’s first administration agreed to an exchange freeing 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The report also documented that Trump tweeted he once planned to secretly meet, days ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, with Taliban leaders at Camp David.

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