Trump says he is not looking for war with Iran as further sanctions imposed
US President Donald Trump said he was “not looking for war” with Iran in an NBC interview broadcast today.
Trump said he will impose further sanctions on Iran from today, but also said he would be willing to find a deal to help Iran’s struggling economy.
“I think they want to negotiate. And I think they want to make a deal. And my deal is nuclear. Look, they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“I don’t think they like the position they’re in. Their economy is, is absolutely broken.”
Iran said the threat of new sanctions was just bluster from the US.
They threats of new sanctions were “just propaganda, as all sanctions … have been imposed and there are no more sanctions left,” state-run news agency IRIB quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying.
Trump’s hawkish national security adviser John Bolton warned Iran today on a trip to Israel not to “mistake US prudence and discretion for weakness”.
“No one has granted them a hunting license in the Middle East,” he said.
Last week Trump said he had drawn back from a retaliatory strike on Iran after it shot down an unmanned US drone.
“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights [sic],” he tweeted.
The US President halted the attack after he was told it would kill 150 people.
“Ten minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,” he tweeted.