I’ll resume bombing if Iran acts up, Trump warns after criticism of deal
At G7 meeting in France, president angrily rejects suggestions US will contribute to $300bn fund for Iran
Donald Trump has responded to criticism of his ceasefire deal with Iran, warning at the G7 summit that he was prepared to go back to dropping bombs and insisting the deal did not require the US to pay even 10 cents to Iran.
At the same time, he has backed a G7 leaders’ joint statement that welcomes the deal but says a follow-on agreement is necessary to rein in Iran’s ballistic missile programme, an issue not directly addressed in the memorandum of understanding that is due to be signed on Friday by Iran and the US.
The G7 statement says future negotiations with Iran would benefit from the involvement of a wider group of regional and international actors including the UN nuclear weapons agency, the IAEA.
Trump is under attack, including from some of his domestic supporters, for conducting a war against Iran that has ended in a negotiated deal that has met hardly any of its original objectives.
At a side meeting at the French-hosted G7 meeting in Évian-les-Bains on Wednesday, he promised that if Iran misbehaved he would “go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head”.
He angrily rejected suggestions that the US would be contributing to a $300bn (£224bn) investment fund for Iran but did not deny its existence, instead saying payouts by Gulf states were likely to be conditional on Iran’s good behaviour.
“Anyone who wants to can invest. What do you expect me to say, no one is allowed to invest? But we’re not investing; we’re not putting up even 10 cents,” he said.
“If they [others] want to, they can make this investment. What should I say, no one can ever invest in this country?” He added: “I don’t think the Gulf countries will do this for a while, until they see Iran’s behaviour; this is a matter of behaviour.”
Praising the deal he had struck and claiming no previous US president had been as tough on Iran as him, he said: “There is nothing as smart as the market and the market loves it.”
Trump said: “The alternative would be a worldwide depression”, arguing that if he had not struck a deal, “the strait [of Hormuz] would never have been opened. They don’t like floating billion-dollar ships up and down the strait when their rockets are flying overhead and there are mines all over the place.”
He claimed the price of oil per barrel had fallen to $72 – Brent crude dipped below $80 on Tuesday – and would soon fall below the level it had been at before the war.
The G7 proposal for further talks involving European leaders about Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for proxy forces is bound to be rejected by Iran. Tehran has been negotiating exclusively with the US and regards Europe as largely irrelevant.
Iran is also likely to reject France and Britain’s plan for a taskforce to escort ships through the strait of Hormuz, a proposal endorsed in the G7 leaders’ statement.
On Ukraine, the G7 leaders hailed the battlefield momentum and called for fresh pressure against Russia through sanctions and additional arms deliveries to Kyiv.
The G7 meeting in Évian-les-Bains, chaired by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, brings together the world’s most powerful economies: the US, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and Japan.
The joint G7 statement issued on Wednesday morning suggests Trump unusually has been willing to go some way to accommodating concerns of other leaders on issues on which he has been acting unilaterally, particularly in the cases of Iran and Ukraine.
The leaders said: “We consider this the right moment to proceed with additional measures, as President Trump has delivered a deal that we support in reopening the strait of Hormuz.”
The deal reopens the strait and reiterates Iran’s opposition to possessing nuclear weapons but postpones talks on how to dilute or destroy its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Trump has said he was open to the stockpile being diluted inside Iran under the supervision of the IAEA.
The memorandum agrees to immediately lift US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and a series of related industries, and to create a $300bn reconstruction fund.
The G7 leaders said the agreement, due to be signed on Friday in Switzerland, provided “an historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon and tackling the threats related to its regional and ballistic activities. We support and are ready to contribute to its implementation.”
Reaffirming the right of transit passage without restrictions or tolls as a bedrock of international trade, the leaders said: “The multinational, independent and defensive initiative led by France and the UK can play an important role to facilitate the resumption of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.”
The G7 leaders stated they “strongly support a robust and comprehensive diplomatic follow-on agreement to the memorandum of understanding secured by President Trump that can bring peace and security for all in the region”, implying that the memorandum of understanding was considered too narrow.
Europe has been excluded from the talks the US has conducted with Iran since Trump became president, with some claiming the stretched and relatively small US negotiating team has lacked the expertise to match the Iranian side.
The G7 statement also calls for further economic pressure on Russia, the first time Trump has put his name to a joint G7 statement on the subject – a decision hailed by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, as a gamechanger revealing a new realism by Trump on Ukraine.
To accelerate new momentum in Ukraine, the G7 agreed “to increase the delivery of air defence capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities. We are also ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licences to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production.”
Promising to help Ukraine get through next winter, the statement commits to increasing the pressure on the Russian war economy by strengthening sanctions, including those on the oil and gas sectors.