U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of Iranian attacks in the Middle East on Wednesday, saying that they were a tit-for-tat response to U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week.
“There’s a reason for everything, and we hit them pretty hard last night,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Some people would say they were slightly provoked because we took a strong action for a different reason, so they were reciprocating.”
The United States carried out strikes on Iranian missile and drone sites over the weekend and disabled an unladen oil tanker heading to an Iranian port on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Iran launched missile and drone attacks against civilian targets and U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain. One person was killed and 63 were injured in an Iranian strike that severely damaged the main terminal of Kuwait International Airport.
Trump said that the U.S. military intercepted the attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces, calling them “not a big deal” and saying that “we nipped it in the bud very quickly.”
The U.S. and Iran remain in a tenuous ceasefire as the two sides continue to negotiate a potential settlement to the conflict.
“In that part of the world, ‘ceasefire’ is when you’re shooting in a more moderate manner,” Trump said.
Iran said on Monday that it was withdrawing from the talks over Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted the two conflicts to be treated as separate issues after the United States helped negotiate a partial ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah.
“We actually spoke with Hezbollah for the first time ever, we didn’t know they spoke,” Trump said. “We’re just going to see, but I’d like to separate it.”
For weeks, Trump has suggested that a deal with Iran could be close to completion despite the two sides continuing to publicly disagree over terms, particularly on the question of Iran’s possession and enrichment of nuclear material.
On Wednesday, Trump once again said that a deal could emerge quickly.
“It might not happen, but if it happens, it could happen, like, over the weekend,” he said.
