President Trump said on Wednesday that the ceasefire and US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding are “over” and called Iranian leadership “scum” after the US bombed Iran again and the Iranian military hit back at US bases in the region.
“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. I think they’re scum,” the president told reporters at the NATO summit in Ankara while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
“You know what scum is? They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re 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 added.
Trump suggested that his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could continue negotiations if they wanted to, but that they would “have to come back to me … as far as I’m concerned it’s just a waste of time.”
The president also said that he would bomb Iran again tonight. “We’ll probably hit them hard again tonight. I’ll give him a little warning. We’re going to hit [them] hard tonight, but we’ll see how it all works out,” he said.
Later in the day, Trump said the US wasn’t even “attacking at the highest level” and threatened that the US could destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and desalination plants, attacks that would be clear war crimes under international law.
“The highest level is the bridges, which we can knock down. I would say in one day we could knock down every single bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities … they have desalinization plants, we’ll take them out if we have to. I’d hate to do that. That’s probably the one I’d like to do least,” he said while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump said that the US bombed Iran’s Kharg Island overnight and suggested the US could “take” the island and that Iran wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, though any ground operation would almost certainly result in major US casualties since invading US troops would face sustained Iranian drone and missile fire.
The president approved the Tuesday strikes while at the NATO summit after at least three commercial ships came under drone attack while attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has maintained that, under the MoU, it is solely responsible for traffic passing through the strait and that any arrangements outside its approved channels violate the agreement.
