Washington: US President Donald Trump cast doubt on renewed fighting with Iran, telling CNN it was “highly unlikely,” ahead of a meeting with mediator Qatar’s prime minister on Monday.
Trump has threatened to resume strikes in recent weeks, with US media reports suggesting that hostilities could restart after last Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The president told CNN in an interview on Sunday that renewed fighting was “highly unlikely,” but warned that his decision “depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement.”
“I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don’t know how hard I hit them,” he said.
Trump is scheduled to meet Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is also the country’s foreign minister, at the White House on Monday.
The meeting will be Trump’s first with a foreign leader since a massive midterm loss that saw his Republican Party lose control of Congress.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested on Sunday that peace talks had been paused while the political fallout of the vote was being assessed.
“For the past few days, there has been no more travel (by mediators), and the reason for this is the shock that the election results in the United States have caused to everyone,” Araghchi told state television.
“We now have to see how long it will take for them to digest these results, in order to determine how we are going to move forward,” he added.
– ‘They had enough’ –
Trump has acknowledged that the highly unpopular war with Iran — which began with US-Israeli strikes in late February — was at least partially responsible for the Republicans’ defeat.
Araghchi said Monday that the US president “clearly recognizes that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel.”
“Americans are evidently sick and tired of Israel bamboozling US administrations into Forever Wars,” Araghchi said on X. “They had enough. So has our region.”
In Sunday’s CNN interview, Trump once again suggested that the economic pressure Iran is under will force its leaders into accepting the United States’ terms.
“They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301 percent inflation,” Trump claimed. “They’re withering away financially. We’ve hit them militarily. We could finish them off.”
Iran’s official figures put inflation at nearly 90 percent year-on-year in September.
Iranian state television said the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz was attacked overnight Sunday, hours after the official IRNA news agency reported two explosions there.
Various regional powers, including Qatar and Pakistan, have been trying for months without success to bring a definitive halt to the war.
Outright fighting has largely subsided, but Iran continues in its efforts to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, vital to global energy supplies, while the US Navy maintains its own counterblockade of Iranian ports.
