President Trump insisted on Wednesday that the United States was not in effect paying Iran to agree to the recently negotiated peace agreement, and he angrily proclaimed that his deal was better than the one former President Barack Obama signed with Tehran in 2015.
Speaking to journalists on his last day at the Group of 7 summit in France, Mr. Trump denied reports that the preliminary deal, the contents of which have yet to be released, included any U.S. investment in a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran or any immediate sanctions relief.
Mr. Trump has regularly criticized the deal Mr. Obama signed with Iran as a “disaster.” He has claimed that deal financially rewarded Iran without an ironclad guarantee that it would never obtain a nuclear weapon.
In an expletive-laden rant on Wednesday, Mr. Trump repeated his claim that Mr. Obama had given Iran “$1.7 billion in cash,” and then he derided his predecessor.
“And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama, and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch,’” Mr. Trump said in comments that indicated how determined he is to be seen as a superior negotiator to Mr. Obama.
The details of the current agreement, recorded in a memorandum of understanding, are scheduled to be released on Friday when the two sides formally sign the deal. The signing is expected to result in the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global trade, which Mr. Trump has identified as a key condition of the deal. Thornier issues, like the future of Iran’s nuclear program, would be left to a 60-day negotiating period that begins on Friday.
Few issues animate Mr. Trump and other critics of the Obama-era deal as much as the U.S. shipment to Tehran of $1.7 billion in cash a few months after that nuclear deal was agreed upon. That payment was a debt owed to Iran, which bought military equipment from the U.S. that it never received
The $1.7 billion pales, however, next to the $50 billion or more in Iranian foreign assets unfrozen under the agreement.
Mr. Trump’s comments continued the mixed messaging coming out of his administration. On Monday, Vice President JD Vance told CBS that Iran could be given access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund.
Mr. Trump, in his remarks on Wednesday, said, “It’s false,” when asked about the $300 billion fund, but then he seemed to leave open the possibility that Persian Gulf states could provide money to Iran.
“You can invest if you want,” he said. “What am I going to do, say no one is ever allowed to invest? We’re not investing, we’re not putting up 10 cents and people can decide to do it. That’s up to them.”
He also equivocated on the question of whether the deal included any immediate sanctions relief for Iran. At first he said “no” and then, when asked again, he said, “They have to behave well.”
While Mr. Trump forcefully defended his deal, he also suggested that it was not final. He said that if he was unhappy with how the terms were executed, he would resume the war.
“If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head,” Mr. Trump said.
But for now, Mr. Trump said that “everybody was happy”— most of all the stock market.
“It’s a very strong deal.” he said. “Nobody knows what it is, but it’s very strong. Most people seem to be very happy. Who’s really happy is the market,” he added, referring to a surge in stocks in recent days.
The post Trump Angrily Defends Iran Deal, Belittling the One Obama Signed appeared first on New York Times.
