President Donald Trump and NBC News White House correspondent Garrett Haake tussled over the status of the Iran peace talks at an Oval Office press opportunity on Wednesday.

GARRETT HAAKE, NBC NEWS: You’re facing an opponent right now in Iran that has refused to submit. You seem optimistic now that you may be close to a deal. What’s different about this moment now than in other moments where a deal has seemed close? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, why do you say they refused to submit? You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s going on behind. HAAKE: Iran fired on U.S. ships a few days ago. TRUMP: Yeah, I know. A few days ago is a long time ago. In the world of war, a few days ago — no they want to make a deal badly. And we’ll see if we get there, if we get there, they can’t have nuclear weapons. You know, it’s very simple, but what’s not to submit? So they had a Navy with 159 ships, and now every ship is blown to pieces and lying at the bottom of the water. They had an Air Force, lots of planes, and they don’t have any planes. They don’t have any anti-aircraft. They don’t have any radar left. Their missiles are mostly decimated. They have some. They have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had. And their leaders are all dead. So I think we won. Now it’s only a question of, look, if we left right now Iran, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. You would call that we’re in good shape, right? We’re in good shape. And now we’re doing well. Now we have to get what we have to get. And if we don’t do that, we’ll have to go a big step further. But with that being said, they want to make a deal. We’ve had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it’s very possible that we’ll make a deal.

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