Trump urges Iran to 'do the smart thing' and make a deal to end the war
by AFP, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/afp/ · TheJournal.ieLAST UPDATE | 6 hrs ago
DONALD TRUMP HAS urged Iran to “do the smart thing” and make a deal with the United States to end the war, saying even as a ceasefire teetered that he did not want to kill more Iranians.
“They should do the smart thing, because we don’t want to go in and kill people. Really don’t,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about Iran.
“I don’t want to, it’s too tough.”
Trump declined to say what Iran would have to do to formally violate the nearly month-long truce. Iran has in recent days fired missiles and drones at US forces and the United Arab Emirates.
“You’ll find out,” he said. “They know what to do. They know what not to do, more importantly, actually.”
Trump also accused Iran of “playing games” with a deal to end the war, an agreement which Trump says must ensure that Tehran cannot develop a nuclear weapon.
“What I don’t like about Iran is they’ll talk to me with such great respect, and then they’ll go on television, they’ll say, ‘We did not speak to the President’,” Trump said.
“So they play games, but let me just tell you, they want to make a deal, and who wouldn’t? When your military is totally gone, we could do anything we want to them.”
The ceasefire between Iran and the US is teetering after the two countries traded fire yesterday over the strategic Strait of Hormuz and the United Arab Emirates reported attacks for the first time since the truce was declared nearly a month ago.
A day after Trump announced an operation to escort trapped vessels through the strait, Fox News quoted him as threatening that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US ships.
US ‘not looking for a fight’
Iran appeared undaunted as it vowed to keep exerting control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flowed before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February.
The United States is “not looking for a fight” over the Strait of Hormuz and its ceasefire with Iran still holds, but any attack on commercial shipping will be met with a “devastating” response, the Pentagon chief said.
The warning from Pete Hegseth came on the second day of a US effort to facilitate the transit of commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had closed in response to the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic.
“We’re not looking for a fight. But Iran also cannot be allowed to block innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway,” Hegseth told reporters.
“If you attack American troops or innocent commercial shipping, you will face overwhelming and devastating American firepower,” the Pentagon chief said.
Top US military officer General Dan Caine meanwhile said US forces are ready to resume major combat operations against Iran if ordered to do so.
Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander responsible for US troops in the Middle East, said on Monday that Washington’s forces had intercepted missiles and drones fired by Iran and also destroyed six small Iranian boats that threatened shipping.
The Islamic Republic today denied any combat vessels had been hit, but accused the US of killing civilians on boats.
US forces “attacked two small boats carrying people… they martyred five civilian passengers and must be held accountable for their crime,” Iranian state TV posted on Telegram.
But both Caine and Hegseth downplayed those hostilities, with the general describing it as “low harassing fire” and the Pentagon chief saying that “right now, the ceasefire certainly holds.”
Trump also sought to minimise the war with Iran, calling it “a little skirmish.”
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“We’re in a little skirmish military. I call it a skirmish, because Iran has no chance. They never did. They know it,” Trump said.
On Monday he called it a “mini-war”, and last month he described US military operations against Iran as “a little excursion.”
The UAE, a close US ally and key Arab partner of Israel, said it came under a barrage of missiles and drones from Iran.
“These attacks represent a dangerous escalation and an unacceptable transgression, posing a direct threat to the state’s security, stability, and the safety of its territories,” the UAE’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
A strike targeting an energy installation in the emirate of Fujairah injured three Indian nationals, UAE authorities said.
Two people were also injured when a residential building was hit in Oman’s Bukha along the coastline of the Strait of Hormuz, state media reported.
Return to war footing
Oil prices climbed further after the UAE attack, with the benchmark international contract Brent Crude for July delivery jumping more than 5%.
The soaring energy costs for consumers since the war have caused economic pain around the world and created a political headache for Trump months before congressional elections.
The UAE ordered all schools to return to remote learning for the rest of the week.
According to the UAE defence ministry, four cruise missiles were launched from Iran, with three successfully shot down and another falling into the water.
Iran also fired drones at a tanker affiliated with its state-owned oil giant ADNOC, UAE authorities said.
A senior Iranian military official did not deny the strikes but said that the Islamic republic had “no pre-planned programme to attack the oil facilities in question”.
“What happened was the product of the US military’s adventurism to create a passage for ships to illegally pass through” the Strait of Hormuz, the official said, according to state television.
“The US military must be held accountable for it,” the official added.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi – seen as a moderate in the cleric-run state in which top leaders have been killed by Israel – said that the clashes in the strait showed there was “no military solution to a political crisis” and pointed to Pakistan’s efforts to keep mediating.
“The US should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers. So should the UAE. Project Freedom is Project Deadlock,” he wrote on X.
US flexes muscle in strait
Trump has repeatedly demanded that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war and which Tehran considers a main point of leverage.
On Sunday, Trump announced what he called “Project Freedom” to guide ships from neutral countries out of the Gulf, saying it was a humanitarian effort to help their stranded crews.
Much remained unclear about how the plan would operate and how the United States would assist.
US Central Command said Monday that guided-missile destroyers had transited Hormuz and that, as a first step in “Project Freedom”, two US-flagged merchant vessels had travelled out of the Gulf.
But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied the US statement, saying: “No commercial vessels or oil tankers have passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past few hours.”
Seoul said yesterday that an “explosion and fire” had struck a South Korean ship in the strait.