President Donald Trump on Monday said the future of the war in Iran will be determined by the Iranian regime’s willingness to strike a deal with the U.S. by 8 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
He said that the failure of peace talks would prompt him to order massive military strikes on civilian infrastructure across the country.
Asked by a reporter during a press conference if the war was winding down or heating up, Trump said, “I don’t know. I can’t tell. It depends what they do.”
“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think in good faith, we’re going to find out,” Trump added.
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His remarks were made at a highly-anticipated press conference that followed a weekend of animated and profanity-laced social media missives that detailed the destruction awaiting Iran should a peace deal not be reached.
He also tried to give himself room to navigate on the war, which has steadily grown more unpopular with the American public over the past month as gas prices hit new peaks across the country and hundreds of millions are spent daily on military operations.
Trump repeatedly ducked questions that sought specifics about his red lines and requirements for an end to the war, but he implored the public and press to trust his judgment.
“Every single thing has been thought out by all of us,” he said. “But I can’t reveal the plan to the media.”
The president expressed some optimism toward the prospect of a peace deal.
“I can’t talk about ceasefire, but I can tell you that we have a active, willing participant on the other side,” he said. “They would like to be able to make a deal. I can’t say any more than that.”
But Trump renewed his threat of an all-out assault on Iran’s civilian infrastructure if talks falter.
“They’re going to have no bridges, they’re gonna have no power plants. Stone ages, yeah,” the president said.
At one point, he suggested he had essentially already won the war: “We won. OK. They are militarily defeated.”
“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again,” Trump said. “I mean, complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours.”
Trump said if he had his way he would seize Iran’s oil “because I’m a businessman first.”
“You know the old days … to the winner belong the spoils.”
“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil and everything,” Trump later said.
Throughout the press conference, which lasted more than an hour, Trump berated the journalists in the room. He cut off questions and demanded to know their employers, some of whom he ridiculed.
He brushed off a question about the Geneva Conventions disallowing deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure by voicing his dissatisfaction with the current state of The New York Times.
Earlier in the press conference he demanded the imprisonment of the journalist who first reported on the missing airmen who were shot down over Iran before being rescued by the U.S. military.
One reporter sought to get through a question — “What is your response to critics who say” — before being cut off by the president.
“I don’t care about critics,” Trump said.
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