President Trump said in an interview on Sunday afternoon that the agreement he reached with Iran would ultimately assure that the Strait of Hormuz is \u201cpermanently toll free\u201d and argued that, despite the objections of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he had saved Israel from nuclear obliteration.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump also insisted that if Iran failed to reach a final nuclear accord with the United States \u2014 a process his aides say they expect will begin on Friday in Switzerland \u2014 he would restart military attacks on Tehran or make the United States \u201cthe guardian of the Middle East\u201d in return for 20 percent of the region\u2019s revenues.<\/p>\n
In a 28-minute phone conversation that Mr. Trump initiated from the White House residence, and a brief follow-up call, the president asserted that his decision to attack Iran in late February, and his subsequent naval blockade of its ports after Tehran closed the strait, had remade the Middle East in America\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
Speaking on his 80th birthday, as his family could be heard gathering in the background for a celebratory dinner, he praised two authoritarians \u2014 Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia \u2014 for aiding in the settlement, and excoriated Mr. Netanyahu for mounting attacks that nearly derailed the final agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very difficult guy,\u201d Mr. Trump said of the Israeli prime minister, \u201cand to be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn\u2019t be around for two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the text of the agreement has not yet been published, Mr. Trump seemed to be describing Iranian concessions that the country has not yet made, or that have been kicked to the follow-up negotiations. The memorandum of understanding, for example, only suspends tolls in the strait for 60 days, and then promises a regional dialogue about the future. Iran had never charged tolls before the war, so Mr. Trump is essentially celebrating a return to the prewar status quo.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump repeatedly compared his new memorandum of understanding to the 2015 agreement reached between President Barack Obama and Iran\u2019s leadership, arguing that his agreement will assure that Iran \u201ccannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.\u201d Iran agreed to that when it first ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970, and reaffirmed that agreement on the first page of the Obama-era accord.<\/p>\n
Over the past three months of negotiations, led by the president\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Iranians insisted they would never give up their right to enrich uranium under that treaty. Mr. Trump said they were still negotiating over whether Iran would suspend its enrichment for 20 years \u2014 Mr. Trump hinted he might settle for a 15-year suspension \u2014 but said Iran would be forever limited to enriching at low levels that \u201ccould never be used by the military.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Obama administration\u2019s agreement had the same requirement, but Iran began enriching at far higher levels \u2014 including near-bomb-grade uranium enriched to 60 percent purity \u2014 after Mr. Trump scrapped that deal in 2018.<\/p>\n
In the course of the conversation, the president sounded in a celebratory mood, talking about the coming Ultimate Fighting Championship event being held on the South Lawn of the White House and the possibility that it could be interrupted by rain. \u201cThis happens in wartime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump said in an interview on Sunday afternoon that the agreement he reached with Iran would ultimately…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1452,14670,164,9,24,63,134,136,135,62208,1069,1554],"class_list":["post-266917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-donald-j","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-trump","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}