U.S. President Donald Trump said that he was ready to launch a “higher level” of attacks against Iran on Friday, as the two countries continue negotiations.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said that U.S. forces were “locked and loaded” for those strikes.
The president said that he had two options available for an exit strategy from the conflict.
“There’s a military exit, where we just keep going just the way we are, and we can even make it a heavier dose, and it’s knocking out everything they have,” Trump said. “Or there’s a smarter strategy that you make a deal, and they want to make a deal. I just don’t think they’re ready yet.”In an interview with Axios on Thursday, Trump said he was “close” to a decision on carrying out a “massive attack” against Iran, as the stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz continues.
A reporter asked Trump on Friday what the tipping point for that decision would be.
“Maybe there won’t be a tipping point and maybe there will,” he said. “We’re locked and loaded. We’re ready to go, but we’re talking.”
Earlier in July, Trump said that he believed that the Memorandum of Understanding that he and Iran had signed was “over” and that Iranian leaders were “scum,” after the Islamic Republic continued to carry out attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. He informed Congress on July 10 that the ceasefire with Iran ended three days prior. Since then, the United States has carried out nearly two weeks of nightly air strikes, as Iran continues to carry out missile and drone attacks across the region. Four U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and Jordan last week as a result of those attacks, bringing the American death toll in the conflict to 18.
With Iran continuing to choke off shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump wrote on Wednesday that he would bomb an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship that Iran attacked.
On Friday, he declined to answer a question about whether such strikes would constitute war crimes.
Iranian leaders have continued to use defiant rhetoric about the war, even as Trump speculated during the press conference that they might “cry uncle” or “go into a cave and hide.”
“Iran says it will kill one U.S. service member for every Iranian killed,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, stated on Friday.
Trump noted that the United States had killed previous Iranian leaders, who failed to give him the negotiating responses that he sought.
“We’ve taken out their first level of leadership. We’ve then taken out their second level of leadership,” he said. “We’ve taken out some of the third level, and we’re negotiating with the rest.”
“We are talking to them seriously, but I talked to them before, and they don’t seem to be able to get there,” he said. “Maybe now they will.”
