President Donald Trump on Thursday said Iran must reach an agreement with the United States on curbing its nuclear program or risk “bad things” as he addressed a meeting of his fledgling Board of Peace, at which he touted his efforts in ending Israel’s war in Gaza.
The president laid out what appeared to be a new 10-day deadline for Tehran to avoid military action and said talks between American and Iranian officials have been “good.”
“Good talks are being had. It’s proven to be, over the years, not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran. We have to make a meaningful deal, otherwise bad things happen,” Trump said, adding that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and stressing that military action could come “over the next, probably 10 days” in the absence of an agreement.
Iran, Trump continued, “cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region, and they must make a deal.”
“Or if that doesn’t happen, I maybe can understand if it doesn’t happen … but bad things will happen if it doesn’t,” he said.
The president’s comments come days after talks in Geneva between Iranian representatives and his own envoys had ended without any sort of breakthrough as a massive number of American warplanes — including F-35, F-22 and F-16 fighter jets plus associated tanker and command-and-control aircraft — continue to assemble in the Middle East region.
Trump has also dispatched a pair of U.S. Navy aircraft carrier groups led by U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford to the region, along with each carrier’s embarked air wings that can number as high as 180 planes between the two ships.
He suggested on Wednesday that if Iran fails to agree a deal, it may be “necessary” to attack the country from Diego Garcia or RAF Fairford, threatening to drag Britain into the conflict.
In response, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week that the U.S. “may be struck so hard that it cannot get back up” if it renews attacks against the regime.
Tehran’s saber-rattling has also extended to closing the Strait of Hormuz for the first time since the 1980s this week to carry out naval drills. Thursday saw more drills, this time with Russia, in the Sea of Oman.
The U.S. last carried out strikes on Iran last summer, when B-2 bombers flying from an air base in Missouri dropped bunker-busting weapons onto a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump has claimed that the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but he has nonetheless continued to claim that Tehran poses a nuclear threat and has demanded that the Iranian government abandon the nuclear program he claims to have destroyed.
According to reports, the assembled forces could be ready to strike Iran as early as Saturday.
