U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday effectively declared the Iran ceasefire and its accompanying Memorandum of Understanding dead.
“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” he said in response to a reporter’s question on day two of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.
The reporter had asked: “Is the ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MoU dead?”
“They’re scum... they’re sick people,” he said of Iran’s leadership. The Islamic Republic is “led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people and if they had a nuclear weapon they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned it’s over,” he continued.
“I’ll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They’re good people—Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner. But they have to come back to me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars... We make a deal, everyone’s agreed—no nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside and talk to the press and say ‘we never even talked about it.’ There is something wrong with them, they’re cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”
Asked if this means negotiations will not continue once the funeral proceedings in Tehran for slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei conclude on Thursday, Trump again dismissed the prospects for a successful outcome. “I don’t care. They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time.”
He called the leaders of the Islamic Republic “a bunch of lying guys ... They’re liars. They’re cheats. They’re sick people. They’ve hurt their people. They killed 54,000 people as of now who were protesting. When people say, ‘how come they haven’t taken over?’ They can’t take over because they’re dead. They killed them. Nobody is going to take over. They have no guns and the other side has machine guns, and they’re killing them. The press doesn’t report it. But they’re bad people. They’re bad people, and frankly, I don’t want to waste my time with them. Now, I’ll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want to, but I don’t see it. I don’t like these people, you know that?”
American forces launched strikes against the Iranian regime in response to the Islamic Republic’s attacks on civilian-manned commercial ships on Tuesday, according to U.S. Central Command.
Iran fired missiles at commercial ships transiting the waterway between Iran and Oman, reportedly causing significant damage but no casualties.
