Trump says deal will ‘probably’ be reached soon — or else he’ll blow up Iran
Trump says deal will ‘probably’ be reached soon — or else he’ll blow up Iran
President Trump on Monday pressured Iran to make a deal with the US to end the war — or else he’d wipe out the Islamic regime and its power facilities.
Trump noted, however, that a deal was “probably” close.
“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island.”
Kharg Island is Iran’s main export hub.
Trump said the US purposefully hadn’t touched the sites after having previously given an April 6 deadline to Iran.
“This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror’,” he said.
The renewed threat came just hours after Trump said late Sunday that the US was negotiating “directly and indirectly” with Iran.
He flagged the possibility, too, of taking Iran’s oil — a move that would require seizing Kharg Island, the terminal through which nearly all of Iran’s oil exports pass.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t,” Trump told the Financial Times. “We have a lot of options.”
He added that the US had about 3,000 targets it would still like to hit in Iran, but insisted: “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”he president gave Tehran a 10-day deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has caused oil prices to spike as much as 50%.
On Sunday, as many as 3,500 US Marines and sailors arrived in the Middle East on the USS Tripoli, which Trump has said could be deployed to secure the strait as well as Iranian nuclear facilities.
The Trump administration has not publicly confirmed direct talks with Iran, but reportedly saw its hardline parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, as a potential negotiating partner.
“The enemy, openly, sends messages of negotiation and dialogue, but secretly is planning a ground attack,” Ghalibaf has claimed, according to Iranian state media outlet IRNA.
Ghalibaf threatened the US that its officials were “unaware that our men are waiting for American soldiers to enter on the ground so they can set them ablaze and punish their regional partners forever.”
Officials in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan have primarily mediated talks with the US — foreign ministers from each nation met in Islamabad on Sunday.
On Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pleaded with Trump to “help us stop this war.”
“I speak to you on behalf of myself, humanity, and lovers of peace — and you, Mr. President, are a lover of peace,” el-Sisi said during an international energy conference in Cairo, according to the New York Times. “And you are capable of doing so.”
