President Donald Trump held a press conference today (Tuesday) and fielded questions primarily about Iran and recent violations of the ceasefire agreement.
When asked what Iran needs to do to violate the ceasefire, Trump responded: “You’ll find out—because I’ll announce it. They know what to do and more importantly they know what not to do. They fired on American ships with small arms from small, fast motorboats—because they don’t have a navy anymore. Even though their boats are fast, they’re not faster than missiles. They had 8 of those and they were destroyed.”
Asked whether he plans to arm the Iranian people, the president said: “I don’t want to say that. People ask why they don’t protest and demonstrate? Even if 200,000 took to the streets—they have no weapons. The regime killed 42,000 citizens last month, 42,000 unarmed protesters.”
Trump was also asked what he hopes to achieve from his meeting with Chinese President Xi regarding Iran. “I have a very good relationship with President Xi,” he said. “He used to get 60% of his oil from Hormuz and he doesn’t need to get oil from them anymore, he can turn to the U.S. There’s a whole line of countries waiting to get oil from America and I said I’m doing this for the good of the world—not just for the good of the U.S.”
“If we weren’t attacking them, the Iranians would have taken over the Middle East—there wouldn’t be a Middle East anymore,” Trump continued. “Now they’re trying to survive without success, unless they make a deal with us. If they don’t sign a deal with us—they won’t be able to survive, it will be very easy believe me.”