'More fun to sink them': Trump recounts exchange with US military after strike on Iran navy ships

US President Donald Trump said American forces sank dozens of Iranian naval vessels during the ongoing conflict with Iran, remarking that US military officials preferred destroying the ships rather than capturing them.

Speaking about the attacks, Trump said he had questioned why the vessels were not seized instead of sunk.“I said, ‘Why don’t we just capture the ship? We could use it. Why did we sink them?’” Trump said, recounting a conversation with military officials. “He said, ‘It’s more fun to sink them.’ They like sinking them better.”

Trump made the remarks while describing US operations against Iran’s navy as part of the broader war involving the United States and Israel.

According to the president, American forces destroyed 46 Iranian ships during the campaign. “The Navy is gone laying at the bottom of the ocean. Forty-six ships,” he said, adding that he had been “a little upset” that the vessels were not captured.The comments came as Trump insisted that the conflict could still prove brief, even as fighting continued across the region. Addressing Republican lawmakers at his golf club in Doral, Florida, the president described the war as a limited operation launched to eliminate threats from Tehran.

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some people,” Trump said. “And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”At the same time, he signalled that the campaign was far from over. “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump said, calling for what he described as “ultimate victory”.The war, launched jointly by the United States and Israel, has involved air strikes on Iranian military and infrastructure targets and a sharp escalation at sea.

Iranian forces and allied groups have fired missiles and drones across the region, while attacks near the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted a key global oil route.Trump also warned that any Iranian move to halt oil shipments through the strait would trigger a far stronger response from Washington. “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States twenty times harder than they have been hit thus far,” he wrote on social media.The fighting has shaken global energy markets and raised fears of a wider regional war. Oil prices briefly surged to their highest level since 2022 before easing on hopes that the conflict might not last long.Meanwhile, Iran has vowed to continue the fight. Senior Iranian figures have said the country is prepared for a prolonged war, even as heavy strikes continue across cities including Tehran.