Donald Trump warns Iran, says ‘make a deal or we’ll finish…’

Donald Trump said the US would either reach a deal with Iran or “finish the job”, emphasising that Washington has the capability to cripple Tehran’s critical infrastructure if it chooses to do so.

cDonald Trump warns Iran, says ‘make a deal or we’ll finish…’

Washington DC: United States President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) again issued a stringent warning to Iran and said that his country would either reach a deal with the Middle Eastern country or “finish the job.” He said that Washington has the capability to cripple Iran’s critical infrastructure if it wants to do so. “We are going to win one way or the other. We’re either going to make a deal, or we’re going to finish the job,” Trump said.

He added that he preferred a negotiated settlement over military action.

“I’d rather make a deal because I don’t want to affect 91 million people. We can knock down their bridges in one hour. We can knock out their energy supply, all of those big plants that they’ve built, big, beautiful modern plants. They had a lot of money. They don’t have any money now. We haven’t given them any money,” Trump said.

The US President further claimed that the US could destroy Iran’s electricity and power generation facilities within hours.

“But we can knock out their electricity and power-generating plants in, I would say, a small part of an afternoon. Every plant will be gone. And they know that,” he said.

Trump’s latest remarks come days after he claimed that Washington had the capability to eliminate Iran’s surviving leadership in “one shot” if it wanted to, referring to senior Iranian officials who gathered during the week-long state funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in joint US-Israeli air strikes on February 28.

In an interview with Axios, Trump had said, “They are all there. One shot [and we can take them all out], but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with,” indicating that the US intended to keep diplomatic channels with Tehran open despite its military capabilities.

Iran strongly condemned Trump’s remarks on Sunday. In a post on X, the Iranian Embassy in Armenia criticised both Trump and the US, saying the US would never understand the grief surrounding Khamenei’s death because it “neither has a civilisation, history, nor honour.”

The embassy further stated, “People can be killed, but ideals cannot. You killed Ayatollah Khamenei, but in reality, you broke a perfume bottle whose scent spread everywhere,” referring to the large crowds that attended the late leader’s funeral.

Meanwhile, the body of Iran’s former supreme leader has arrived in Qom, with state television reporting that it was transported by helicopter, according to Al Jazeera.

Iranian state media, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) published footage of a chopper hovering above Jamkaran Mosque in Qom province, saying that Khamenei’s body was kept inside it. Al Jazeera reported that the funeral procession will continue on Tuesday in Qom before it moves to Najaf and Karbala as part of the ceremony.

(with ANI inputs)