By Bo Erickson, Steve Holland and Elwely Elwelly<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Monday the United States \u200cwould either reach a deal with Iran or “finish the \u200cjob,” renewing his threat of military action as Tehran projects defiance following the funeral \u200bof Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n
Indirect U.S.-Iran talks ended last week without any public sign of headway toward a lasting peace, despite a 60-day ceasefire intended to create space for diplomacy following the U.S. and Israeli \u200cstrikes that triggered the \u2060conflict.<\/p>\n
“We’re either going to make a deal or we’re going to finish the job. OK. And it won’t \u2060be tough to finish the job. I’d rather make a deal, because I don’t want to affect 91 million people,” Trump told reporters \u200bin the \u200bOval Office.<\/p>\n
“We can knock down their \u200bbridges in one hour, we \u200ccan knock out their energy supply…. They don’t have any money now. We haven’t given them any money.”<\/p>\n
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr called Trump’s threat “delusional.”<\/p>\n
“Iranians are unfamiliar with the language of threats. So speak to the Iranian people with respect, \u200cotherwise we will respond in another language,” \u200bZolqadr said in comments carried by \u200bstate media.<\/p>\n
Trump spoke after Khamenei’s \u200bweekend funeral where, rather than looking weakened by the war that \u200cbegan with U.S. and Israeli strikes \u200bon February 28, \u200bIranians appeared to be defiant, united and determined to shape what comes next.<\/p>\n
The 60-day ceasefire was intended by Washington to revive diplomacy \u200bon stopping Iran developing \u200ca nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Steve Holland in \u200bWashington, and Elwely Elwelly in Dubai; Editing by Doina \u200bChiacu, Howard Goller and Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Bo Erickson, Steve Holland and Elwely Elwelly WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[3670,89,38,34,34776,57600],"class_list":["post-193755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-arsenal","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-steve-holland","tag-supreme-national-security-council-mohammad-baqer-zolqadr"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116877279136436434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}