‘I Don’t Want to Deal With Them’: Trump Declares Iran Truce Over as US Resumes Bombing

This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP on Wednesday said the interim ceasefire agreement designed to provide space for a lasting peace agreement with Iran was “over,” remarks that came just hours after the American military launched a new wave of airstrikes against Iran.

Speaking alongside NATO Secretary ⁠General Mark Rutte in Ankara, Türkiye, Trump attacked Iranian leaders as “scum” and “sick people” and dismissed the idea of returning to negotiations as “a waste of time.”

“To me, I think it’s over,” said the US president, referring to the temporary ceasefire established under the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed last month. “I don’t want to deal with them.”

Trump’s comments, which sent oil prices surging and intensified fears of a resumption of deadly all-out war in the Middle East, came after the US Central Command launched what it characterized as “powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping” in the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Trump administration revoked a waiver allowing Iran to export its oil—a key component of the faltering MOU, which Iran and the US signed less than a month ago. Iran’s Foreign Ministry decried the Trump administration’s move as a violation of the MOU and “yet another indication of the US administration’s bad faith, inconsistency, and unreliability,” according to a statement published by Iran’s Fars News Agency.

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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Wednesday that it hit more than 80 US military targets in the Middle East in response to the Trump administration’s latest strikes.

Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, warned in a statement late Tuesday that “it is critical that Iran and the US recommit to the terms of the MOU and get negotiations back on track before it is too late.”

“The US has consistently pushed the boundaries of the agreement and put it on uncertain footing, from the failure to rein in Israel’s actions in Lebanon to the establishment of the ‘alternative corridor’ in the Strait outside of Iranian purview,” said Abdi. “Iran believes this is an attempt to relitigate the MOU that it says recognized Iran’s authority to manage the waterway. So long as Iran perceives the US as seeking to weaken its position and eventually return to war, negotiations are likely to take a back seat to more fighting.”

“As disastrous as this war has been for American interests thus far, President Trump appeared to have found an off-ramp before it triggered uncontrollable economic fallout or escalated to a ground war that could become a generational quagmire,” Abdi added. “Now, after having narrowly avoided a worst-case scenario, the president risks being pulled back in and returning us to an unwinnable war.”

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