President Donald Trump defended his decision to begin the Iran War during a rally in New York on Friday, saying that Americans paying more for gas is a worthy price to pay so Iran does not have access to a nuclear weapon.

The president was speaking at a rally with law enforcement officials on Long Island to support Nassau County’s Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York governor.

Trump mocked how Democrats and the “fake news media” in attendance of the rally “keep talking about affordability.” He specifically referenced egg prices in the first days of his second term, calling the affordability issue a “hoax” and blaming the Democrats for the high prices at the beginning of his term.

The president then praised the military and his own efforts in Iran.

“And after we finish defeating Iran — which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said. He also praised his blockade, saying that “no ships get through unless we want them to.”

“We’re doing really good — we’re doing good in every way. You know, I built the military and used it — a little more than I wanted to, frankly, but that’s OK, because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“If we didn’t hit the B-2 bombers,” he continued, “[Iran] would have had a nuclear weapon, and it would have been a very sad day for this country and for the entire world.”

Trump added that while he was visiting Iowa ahead of a trip to the Middle East that gas prices there were less than $2. Gas prices on Wednesday hit their highest-ever price for this point in the year according to GasBuddy.

The report noted that gas prices have never gone above $4 per gallon after August 12 in any year. The average fuel price as of this week was just over $4 per gallon.

“For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have — a country, really, it’s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world, we don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. So remember that,” Tump said.

He doubled down on this statement, saying that he will “never apologize” for starting the war in Iran. (He initiated the current military conflict on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israeli forces launched a wave of joint preemptive airstrikes across Iran.)

“I’ll never apologize, I did the right thing,” he said.