US President Donald Trump is “delusional” and “seeking to deceive his audience” when it comes to what he claims is the success of the Iran war.
Those are the words of Robert Malley, who in 2015, under the Obama administration, was one of the lead negotiators on the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan.
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When Mr Trump addressed the United States on Thursday with a speech full of bluster and bravado, he made claims of dismantling a regime, destroying Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities and ruining the Islamic Republic’s navy and air force.
Mr Trump also blamed the previous Biden administration for leaving the United States “dead and crippled”.
Mr Malley, who served under Mr Biden as special envoy for Iran, spoke to 7.30 in the wake of Mr Trump’s comments on the war — a war that, despite being successful in killing previous supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several regime leaders, has caused global economic pain.Â
Robert Malley says Donald Trump threatened to commit war crimes during his address to the US. (Getty Images: Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu Agency)
That pain has been caused by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) choking the shipping, particularly of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.
The war was started under the premise of what Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was an imminent nuclear threat posed by Iran.
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On Thursday, the US president said the deal that Mr Malley worked on under Barack Obama was a “disaster”.
Mr Malley told 7.30 the remarks made by the president about the Iranian nuclear threat were not true, especially in light of Mr Trump’s 2025 declaration that the US had decimated Iran’s nuclear capabilities through a series of strikes in June that year.
“There is simply no truth to that,” Mr Malley told 7.30.
“It’s extraordinary how he’s now saying that after he claimed that he’d obliterated Iran’s nuclear program less than a year ago.
“He’s now saying that they still were at the doorstep of acquiring a nuclear weapon, which he claims they would’ve used immediately.
“There’s not a single fragment of that claim that is accurate.”Malley questions regime change
He also rubbished Mr Trump’s repeated claims that the war in Iran had resulted in regime change, something Australia’s own prime minister, Anthony Albanese, would not do on 7.30 on Monday night.
Mojtaba Khamenei was installed as supreme leader after his father was killed.
 (Reuters: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA)
The regime change Mr Trump is claiming to have enacted is replacing former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
The change may also lead to an increased role for the IRGC.
Mr Malley said, if anything, this might now be a more hardline Iranian regime that has a renewed reason for prejudice against the US.
“Nobody sees any truth in that,” Mr Malley said when asked about Mr Trump’s assertions about regime change in Tehran.
“Much of the prior Iranian leadership has been killed, but the people who are now in power are, if anything, more radical, more hardline, more determined to confront the United States.”
“The notion that this is a more … rational, more pragmatic regime … this is just him projecting to try to justify the fact that his war was a success and, whenever it ends, to be able to say that he achieved sort of, as a side benefit, a regime change that he claims he was never seeking.
“Every word in that statement of his is just delusional and seeking to deceive his audience.”Concerns about war crimes
Among the major parts of Mr Trump’s speech were further threats against Iran.
Smoke rises in Tehran after explosions in the city in March. (Getty Images)
In particular, Mr Trump said the US assault would step up over the next few weeks.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” Mr Trump said.
“We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
Mr Malley, a seasoned diplomat, said that rhetoric was very concerning and should not be normalised.
“Just listening to him, [it is disturbing] how normalised it’s become to have a president threaten to commit war crimes, which is what bringing Iran back to the Stone Age would be, on behalf of an unlawful war,” he told 7.30.
“He seems to be driven by this notion that if the US has the capability to do something militarily, it can do it and it will do it if he thinks that Iran is not capitulating or is not responding to his every demand.
“I think we should pause a bit and think the most powerful man on Earth has just threatened to destroy not a government, not military sites, but a country on behalf of a war that he still is not able to justify.”
Mr Trump has also been struggling to justify the economic cost.
The Strait of Hormuz has been choked by the IRGC. (ABC News Graphics)
The US has unleashed billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry in what some have said is a war for oil but it has not been able to free up the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Malley says for Iran, despite its major losses, that will be a key takeaway.
“The one thing that the gift, if you will, that this war has offered Iran, which is they’ve discovered that if they want, they have this mastery of the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
“They always had it implicitly in a latent form. Now they have it physically, practically, and you don’t need that much to be able to discourage ships or discourage insurance companies from insuring anyone who wants to go through the strait without Iranian consent.”
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