President Donald Trump on Wednesday lambasted his critics who accused him of caving to Iran, calling them “stupid” and arguing that prolonging the war could lead to an “international depression.”
“There’s not one nation that came to us and said ‘please keep dropping bombs on them, please keep dropping bombs’ — the stupid people say that,” Trump said at the the close of the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France. “The one thing I didn’t want to see is, I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe… every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship.”
Trump’s forceful denunciation of critics, including some in his own party, underscores the pressure his administration is under to sell an agreement that on its face fails to live up to many of the objectives the president laid out over the four-month war.
The deal does not explicitly address whether Iran gets to keep its ballistic missiles and the country would be allowed to have a nuclear program for civilian purposes, Trump said, calling both “common sense.”
Critics of the deal worry over the memorandum’s lack of explicit prohibition on Iran restarting its nuclear program.
Trump’s defense boiled down to the idea that the U.S. had achieved most of what it could from its military campaign and naval blockade. He had already asserted that Americans lacked “the stomach” for greater action and explained today that further bombing risked destroying the global economy.
The remarks were the starkest Trump has spoken about the impact of the war on the economy, as closures in the Strait of Hormuz have raised global oil prices. He said he didn’t want to be compared to former President Herbert Hoover, whose term was weighed down by the Great Depression. Previously, Trump was blase about the impact of the war on the economy, saying the oil prices were “worth it” to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and promising that prices would come down quickly after the war’s end.
“It would have been easier, and I would have satisfied a group of 10 percent of the people, but it would have been the wrong thing to do, and it could have caused it, could have caused an international depression,” he said.
The Memorandum Of Understanding was supposed to be signed by Vice President J.D. Vance in Switzerland on Friday. The president indicated Wednesday it could be signed sooner. The signing is expected to kick off a new round of negotiation on a final agreement.
“If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, it’s all right. We go back to bombing,” Trump said, underscoring the stakes of the next two months. But that promise doesn’t carry the teeth it did several months ago. He has made plain his desire to wrap up the fighting and the bombing runs did not loosen Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
The agreement, the president said, does allow for other countries to invest in Iran as its economy reopens. The Strait of Hormuz is supposed to open upon the signing of the document, and Trump said the U.S. is willing to unfreeze Iranian assets if Tehran continues to follow the agreement and not pursue nuclear weapons.
He said that he does not mind if Iran rebuilds its economy with the help of other countries because he doesn’t want Iranians to “starve to death.”
Some things, Trump claimed, are not in writing in the document, but Iran will still have to follow verbal agreements.
“If they don’t honor the agreement, or some things aren’t even mentioned in the agreement, it’s a memorandum of understanding, but we have an understanding of certain things without writing it. And if they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it,” he said.
After several days of demands for transparency from Republicans and Democrats, a senior administration official read the text of the deal to reporters just after Trump’s forceful defense.
The deal commits both sides to an immediate ceasefire, a process to end the U.S. naval blockade and 60 days of toll-free transit in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. will immediately issue sanctions waivers so Iran can begin selling oil and will also begin a process for releasing frozen funds, with Iran’s Central Bank able to freely determine how to spend the money. Iran will also have to freeze its nuclear program and help to demine the strait.
Everything else is left up to negotiation, and the verifiable nuclear commitments that the White House has touted remain aspirational. While the Strait of Hormuz will operate toll free for the 60 day period, it allows Iran and Oman to determine how it will administer the vital waterway after that, which could formalize their control.
Though the White House hoped the preliminary text would bolster its case that Iran’s benefits are performance based, it actually appeared to demonstrate the opposite for some of the financial relief. The text also did little to quiet frustration among Republican critics, who are concerned about the upfront economic relief Iran could receive and language that could limit Israel’s actions in Lebanon. The agreement also says nothing about ballistic missiles that are also a key concern of the Gulf states and Israel. They are also upset that the deal says nothing about Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities that Trump had said were a red line.
“The Trump administration told us for a week to attack the media for being fake news and carrying water for Iranian hardliners. [The administration] just confirmed that everything that’s been reported is 100 percent accurate,” said a GOP foreign policy strategist granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s strategy.
During the press conference, Trump suggested Iran should be able to maintain some ballistic missile capability. He and his team had cited Iran’s ballistic missiles in their justification to go to war in February, saying those missiles were a shield for Iran’s nuclear program that would allow it to wreak havoc in the region.
“They have to have some because other people have some,” Trump said. “Missiles aren’t the problem, they hurt a little…but they don’t blow up the planet.”
He said Gulf nations would address the non-nuclear issues with Iran.