US President Donald Trump said he wants to “take the oil in Iran” and perhaps seize Kharg Island, while at the same time insisting that Washington is doing “extremely well” in negotiations with Iran and that he is “pretty sure” a peace deal will be reached “soon.”
The mixing of threats and the possibility of a peace deal with Tehran came in an interview published late on March 29 in the Financial Times and in remarks an hour later to reporters aboard Air Force One.
To reporters, Trump hailed progress in talks with Iran, saying they were being held directly and indirectly with “reasonable” leaders and asserted that Tehran was partially opening the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which some 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies pass.
He didn’t elaborate on what he called direct talks with Iran, whose leaders deny negotiations are taking place. Tehran has said it received, reviewed, and rejected a 15-point US peace plan that was delivered through Pakistani emissaries.
Trump said: “We are doing extremely well in that negotiation. But you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up…whether it’s with B52 bombers” or by having torn up the 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran signed with world powers, including the United States, Russia, and China.
“I think we will make a deal with them. Pretty sure. But it’s possible we won’t,” he told reporters. “But we’ve had regime change already. [The Iranian] regime was decimated, destroyed. They’re all dead.”
He said, without being specific, that the current leaders have been “very reasonable.”
“I do see a deal in Iran. Could be soon,” he said.
In the FT interview, Trump said that “my preference would be to take the oil,” likening the situation to that of Venezuela, where he said he intends to take control of the country’s oil industry “indefinitely” after US forces captured leader Nicolas Maduro in January.
“To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” Trump was quoted by the FT as saying.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said, referring to the hub where most of Iran’s oil is exported.
