US President Donald Trump said Iran has agreed to “just about everything we need” in negotiations over the memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, while describing Tehran as significantly weakened.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with CNBC, President Trump did not specify what commitments he believed Iran had made. Negotiations on a final settlement remain in their early stage, since the two sides have yet to resolve disagreements over the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic shipping route that Iran closed early in the war, disrupting the global economy.
“We’re negotiating, and we’ll see,” President Trump said.
The president denied the conflict could be viewed as a conventional war, saying, “This is not a war per se. This is the denuking of Iran.”
“You can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” President Trump said. He described Iran as “a spoiled child” and the “bully of the Middle East.”
“You’ve had your way for many years with your parents, and all of a sudden they come down hard on you, it takes you a little while to get used to it,” he said. “They’ve had their way for 47 years.”
Throughout the interview, President Trump argued that Iran’s military capabilities had been severely degraded.
“They have no navy, they have no air force, they have no radar, their leaders are all dead,” he said. “Their strength is gone, their bravado is gone.”
He also credited the US naval blockade with causing economic hardship inside Iran, saying, “They have 300% inflation, they’re making no money.”
President Trump defended the targeted killings of Iranian leaders, saying they resulted in more “rational” figures taking power and had produced some degree of “regime change.”
“We’re on the third set of leaders, and we actually get along with them,” he said, referring to strikes that killed the predecessors to Iran’s current leadership. “I think they’re much more rational. By the way, I think that’s regime change, but I’m not looking for regime change. I’m looking for something very simple. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
President Trump also repeated his claim that Iran would purchase US agricultural products under a future peace agreement.
“They’re making no money, so we’re going to take some of the money, and we’re going to buy them. They need food. They need corn and wheat and soybeans, and we’re going to have exclusively our American farmers provide,” he said.
Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of Iran’s central bank, told the Iranian news agency Tasnim last month that “there is no obligation to buy agricultural inputs from the US.”
