‘Either a deal with Iran or US will finish the job’: Trump’s stark warning to Tehran amid peace talks | World

Amid ongoing peace talks, US President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) issued a sharp warning to Iran, saying the United States would either reach a deal with Tehran or “finish the job”, while asserting that Washington has the capability to cripple Iran’s critical infrastructure if it chooses to do so.

It is pertinent to note that the indirect US-Iran talks ended last week without any public sign of progress towards a lasting peace, despite a 60-day ceasefire that was meant to create diplomatic space after the US and Israeli strikes that triggered the conflict.

We’re going to finish the job: Trump

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Iran, Trump said, “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.”

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.

US has capability to eliminate Iran’s surviving leadership

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.”

“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,” the embassy said.

Also Read: As Trump keeps up threats, calls to kill him echo across Khamenei funeral in Iran

Also Read: Where is Mojtaba? Iran’s Supreme Leader skips father Ali Khamenei’s funeral as 3 brothers attend