President Trump says Iran deal could be signed this weekend, but questions remain – KOCO
President Donald Trump said he canceled attacks against Iran planned for Thursday night after a diplomatic breakthrough.
President Donald Trump said he canceled attacks against Iran planned for Thursday night after a diplomatic breakthrough.
President Donald Trump said he canceled attacks against Iran planned for Thursday night after a diplomatic breakthrough.
President Donald Trump called off planned strikes and said a deal with Iran could be signed as soon as this weekend.
It was the latest example of diplomatic whiplash. Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. and Iran were on the cusp of a deal only to come up short, but he expressed confidence on Thursday that this time would be different.
“Because they’ve taken a pounding. They’ve taken a pounding like very few people could take, and they want to make the deal a lot more than I do,” Trump told reporters.
Earlier Thursday, Trump wrote on social media that he had canceled scheduled strikes against Iran because final points had been “approved by all parties involved.” He specifically named Israel as one of those parties, among several other Middle Eastern countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later released a statement saying it would not be part of the memorandum of understanding.
Trump also said he believed that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, had signed off on the deal, but a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on state television that the text of a deal had not been finalized yet.
Trump said the agreement would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping lane.
He also said that Iran has committed not to pursue a nuclear weapon, but described this part of the agreement as “conceptual” and did not specify a deadline for finalizing those details.
“We think it’s going to go pretty quickly. I don’t want to say a deadline because, if I say a deadline, you’ll say, ‘Oh, he didn’t meet the deadline,'” Trump said. “It’s not going to matter much because it’s going to get signed.”
The announcement came after two days of back-and-forth attacks between the U.S. and Iran, during which Trump threatened to take total control of Iran’s oil and gas industries.
When asked whether his threat to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil export hub, was off the table, Trump said it would be if the agreement is signed.
Trump has previously floated the possibility of deploying American troops to take the island, but told Fox News yesterday, “I don’t know that America has the stomach for it.”
Critics have warned that such a mission would put U.S. troops within range of Iranian missiles and risk significant casualties.
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