“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said at a White House press briefing, as he pressed Tehran to accept a deal to restore oil transit.
Iran, however, rejected a temporary cease-fire proposal tied to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with state media saying Tehran would not trade access to the waterway for a short-term truce and instead demanded a permanent end to the war and broader concessions.
At the same briefing, he broadened his criticism beyond Iran to U.S. allies. “It’s not just NATO… Do you know who else didn’t help us? South Korea,” he said.
Trump tied the complaint directly to U.S. troop deployments on the Korean Peninsula. “We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea… right next to Kim Jong Un, who has a lot of nuclear weapons,” he said, again overstating the American presence. U.S. Forces Korea stands at roughly 28,500 personnel.
The remarks come as Seoul has yet to respond to Washington’s earlier request to dispatch naval assets to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy chokepoint.
Trump reiterated that reopening the strait is central to any agreement. “We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me… and part of the deal’s going to be we want free traffic of oil, and everything else,” he said.
He warned that failure to meet the deadline would trigger strikes on Iran’s infrastructure. “We have a plan… where every bridge in Iran will be decimated… where every power plant in Iran will be out of business,” he said.
Trump extended similar criticism to Japan and Australia, while reiterating his dissatisfaction with NATO, which he described as ineffective, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is not afraid of NATO, but he is afraid of the United States.”
In contrast, he praised Gulf partners including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, calling their stance “excellent.”
Trump also reiterated his personal rapport with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying the two “get along very well” and that Kim “likes me.”
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