Donald Trump has accused Iran of trying to stall on making a peace agreement by running down the clock before November’s US midterm elections in the hope of getting better terms. “They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms’,” the US president told a meeting of his cabinet at the White House on Wednesday.
He insisted the approach – supposedly aimed at ratcheting up pressure on the US and global economies by keeping the strategically vital strait of Hormuz closed – would fail, and claimed that Iran “wants very much to make a deal”. Trump said the Iranian economy was in freefall, suggesting that made it imperative for Iran to compromise: “They have 250% inflation, their money has no value, their whole economic system is broken down.”
His comments, at the 12th cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term, came as talks aimed at ending the near-three-month conflict are said to be at a crucial stage. Current attempts to reach a deal had so far failed, he claimed, because “we’re not satisfied with it”. “But we will be,” the president added. “Either that, or we will just have to finish the job.”
At one stage, Trump appeared to contradict himself after renewing his call on Arab allies including Saudi Arabia and Qatar to sign the Abraham accords granting full diplomatic recognition of Israel. “I think those countries owe to us … I don’t think we should make a deal if they don’t sign,” he said. But he retreated when asked whether the Iran agreement was contingent on more countries joining the accords, saying: “I don’t want to say that. I’m not going to give you what’s contingent.”
He also claimed to have brought about regime change in Iran through the assassinations of a generation of the country’s leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even though he has been succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is considered to be more hardline. “We didn’t set out for regime change, but … we are dealing with a completely different group of people than we were at the beginning,” Trump said. “One regime is gone, another regime is gone, we are dealing with the third.”
