(Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com) President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Washington and Tehran was “not final” and warned the United States could return to “dropping bombs” on Iran if the country “didn’t behave.”
“It’s a Memorandum of Understanding. If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, okay? Because they’ve misbehaved for 47 years,” the president told reporters on the sidelines of the G7 summit in
The US and Iran are set to hold an official signing ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, after which negotiations on the nuclear issue and sanctions relief for Iran will begin for a 60-day period.
Trump said the deal is a “great deal for a lot of reasons” and appeared to suggest that what has been published in the media is not the actual text by saying that “nobody knows what it is,” though later, US officials released the full MoU text, and it was very similar to what was published in Al Arabiya a day earlier.
The president also denied that the MoU includes a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, even though it was included in the text released by US officials.
“That’s false,” Trump said when asked about the fund. “People can invest if they want. I mean, what am I going to do — say nobody’s ever allowed to invest? We’re not investing. We’re not putting up ten cents. People can decide to do that, but that’s up to them… We do not have a fund.”
The president also acknowledged in his remarks that if the US continued the blockade on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, it would cause a “worldwide depression.”
Iranian media reported on Wednesday that since the announcement of the MoU, 11 ships have been able to “break through the US blockade,” including eight that departed Iranian ports and three that arrived in Iran. The US military issued a notice to mariners on Monday, saying the blockade was still in place and advising ships not to cross the area “until explicit direction is given.”
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
