U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Sunday said an agreement with Iran may not occur until the current regime is toppled, coming as American forces launched attacks on multiple Iranian ships this weekend.
“There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don’t know that,” Wright told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday morning, responding to a question about whether a nuclear deal is possible amid months of fighting.
Wright added that U.S. forces have significantly degraded Tehran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon through bombing campaigns.
“We are degrading their capacity to develop nuclear weapons and ultimately to deliver them, if they develop them,” he said. “It is [a] 47-year-long effort. This is not trivial, but the United States will get the job done, and we will work in cooperation with our allies in the region.”
Throughout the war, U.S. President Donald Trump has said Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, while negotiations between his administration and Tehran more than two months ago had focused on the controversial nuclear program.
Iran has maintained that it is using its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, although United Nations inspectors have long said they have been denied access to the country’s facilities.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a 2025 report that Tehran was accelerating production of near-weapons-grade uranium. Some of the uranium, it said, was enriched up to 60 percent, a level of purity that is just a technical step away from reaching the 90 percent threshold required to produce a nuclear weapon.
The Trump administration in the summer of last year launched a two-week bombing campaign alongside Israel’s military, dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” that targeted multiple suspected nuclear facilities in Iran.
Wright on Sunday noted that a recent flare-up in tensions pose “a challenge” because Iran’s regime “is doing everything they can to cling on to something.”
“They know their nuclear program is coming to an end, their navy’s come to an end, their air force has come to an end,” he added to ABC. “They’re clinging on to power as the United States continues to escalate the volume of oil that transits through the Strait of Hormuz.”
In a statement, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said Saturday that its forces destroyed three oil tankers used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) after Tehran targeted two U.S. Navy ships.
Describing the IRGC’s attempts as “failed” and “unprovoked,” CENTCOM said a U.S. aircraft carrier and destroyer evaded several attacks. No American service members were injured, it added.
U.S. military forces said that in response they disabled IRGC tankers—the M/T Downy and the M/T Stark 1—and totally destroyed a crude oil carrier, the M/T Kylo, according to the military statement. A video that was separately uploaded by the command Saturday showed the Kylo sinking in the Gulf of Oman.
Wright on Sunday said that an average of 9 million barrels of oil each day are passing through the Hormuz Strait, a key waterway that links the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Since the start of the war, Iran has often fired upon commercial vessels traveling through the strait and has insisted that those ships follow pre-approved routes.
“But the critical mission that our Navy is doing is not just to escort the ships out, but it’s to prevent any Iranian oil or any other export products from coming out,” the secretary added, referring to a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports that has been in effect since July.
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