Trump Threatens Action if Iran Breaks Deal

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would “do what I have to do” if Iran failed to stick to its agreement with Washington.

“If Iran does not live up to their agreement, or if they are not behaving, I will do what I have to do”, Trump told reporters.

Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed an interim US-Iran deal last week, more than three months after the US and Israel attacked Iran and Tehran responded with strikes on Israel and Gulf states hosting US bases.

Meanwhile, Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said Tehran had agreed to establish a communication line for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to prevent conflicts and incidents in the strategic waterway. He also said that the signing process for the release of $12bn in frozen Iranian assets had been finalized during the talks in Switzerland.

Trump said Iran was supposed to use the unfrozen funds to buy food exclusively from the United States. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, however, cited Iranian central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati as saying that Tehran was under no obligation to purchase agricultural inputs from the US under the current memorandum of understanding.

“All that money’s coming back in the form of purchases of food which they desperately need. They have 91 million people, they can’t feed them. So, the money that we lift is going to go to our farmers”, Trump asserted.

Hemmati said the remaining frozen funds would not necessarily be used solely for essential goods and could also be spent on other non-sanctioned goods, Tasnim reported.

The latest escalation followed years of Iranian support for armed groups hostile to Israel, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Israeli strikes in Lebanon, the latter launched after Hezbollah attacks, have killed thousands, displaced millions, shaken global markets and pushed up oil prices.

(Reuters, bak)