President Donald Trump on Monday hailed the ongoing U.S. standoff with Iran as an example of his 'military genius' and claimed the U.S. has no shortages of key ammunition to throw at the war effort even as he described the shaky ceasefire with Tehran as 'on life support.'
Trump made the boastful comments during an event billed as a discussion on new administration programs to support maternal health which turned into an impromptu Oval Office press conference.
Asked by a reporter why he had rejected an Iranian truce proposal as 'unacceptable' a day earlier, Trump did not answer directly and instead riffed on media reports indicating that he is feeling cornered with little options more than two months after he started the war that has upended the global economy and sent gasoline prices skyrocketing.
'You know, a lot of people said, Well, does he have a plan? Yes, I do — I have the best plan ever,' Trump said. 'The plan is very simple. The blockade, first of all, was a part of military genius. Just like Venezuela was military genius. We have the greatest military in the world by far, and we're stocked up with great ammunition. We have much better stuff than we did two months ago when we first did the attack,' Trump added.
His latest remarks came as the on-again, off-again talks to resolve the months-long impasse over the Strait of Hormuz appear to have deadlocked over Trump's insistence that any agreement to resolve the standoff over the key waterway also include Tehran's disavowal of any nuclear weapons program.
A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, said in a Monday news conference that Tehran had made a 'generous' and 'legitimate' proposal to the U.S. only to see Trump reject it. He told reporters that Iran is asking for 'an end to the war, lifting the (US) blockade ... and releasing Iranian assets that have been unjustly frozen in banks due to US pressure' and warned that any warships in the waterway would meet a 'decisive response.'
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, Tehran has threatened to attack ships passing through the strait without permission and has reportedly placed mines to ward off maritime traffic. The result has been a massive bottleneck with impacts on global trade in oil as well as other key sectors that have seen prices at the pump and of common retail goods skyrocket.
For his part, Trump attacked the Iranian offer as so 'weak' that he 'didn't even finish reading' it and said the ceasefire between Tehran and Washington is now 'the weakest right now after reading a piece of garbage they sent us.'
'Am I going to waste my time reading it? I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support ... I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support,' he said.
Trump also hit out at media reports that he's 'tired or bored' of the two-month-old war. 'They didn't want to believe it. They think that well, I'll get tired of this I'll get tired of this, or I'll get bored, or I'll have some pressure. But there's no pressure. There's no pressure at all. We're going to have a complete victory,' he said.
