TEHRAN – President Donald Trump’s declaration on Iran during the ongoing tour of West Asia has done little to help him move forward with nuclear deals with the country.
Trump headed to Doha, Qatar after visiting Riyadh on Tuesday. His next destination is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is expected to secure similar investment transactions from the Persian Gulf state, as he did in two other capitals.
So far, during his trip, when he had not signed an economic cooperation agreement guaranteed billions of dollars from Arab rulers, Trump has answered questions raised by journalists and forum stories. Some of his statements focus on the indirect negotiations he has held with Iran since early April and with the country.
Speaking at the Riyadh investment forum, Trump has moved on to tease the economic calamity of the 90 million population caused by weakening and debilitating US sanctions over the past 45 years. Sanctions in the 2010s were lifted for a while after Tehran signed a contract restricting the nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief, but Trump abolished the agreement and regained the embargo during his first term in office.
“Iran’s decades of negligence and mismanagement have left a country plagued by blackouts that last for hours a day,” Trump said. Trump’s statement omitted the fact that US sanctions severely restricted Iran’s access to international drought relief and hindered his ability to produce and purchase electricity.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragut said during a side job at a Cabinet meeting in Tehran:
“The head of economic issues is a rog-harmed policy imposed on the US and Iranian people, demanding a system of dependence and obedience that contradicts the dignity of the Iranian people,” he added.
Aragucci also questioned how Trump has the audacity to call Iran the “destructive” force of the region in the face of heinous Israeli crimes over the past two years. “The US President ignores all of Israeli crimes in the region and is trying to portray Iran as a threat. This is a purely deceitful reversal of the source of threat,” he said. “Who has caused so much destruction in Gaza? The regimes attacking regions surrounding Palestine, including Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, have the scope of occupation carried out by Syrian Zionist regimes in recent months, than the entire region of Gaza,” Aragichi added.
Iran and the US have held four rounds of indirect talks to reach an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program, and are currently scheduled for a fifth nuclear program. Trump told both Saudi Arabia and Qatari officials that he wanted a deal with Iran, but he linked it to “maximum pressure” or the threat of unspecified “bad” outcomes. To date, the presence of a president in West Asia did not appear to significantly promote progress towards this deal.