US President Donald Trump said that US has “tremendous support” for its treatment of Iran while speaking at a press conference at the White House in Washington DC on Tuesday. The president also discussed the situation with the recently revealed economic aspects of the Israel-Palestine peace deal and his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
He criticized at length the nuclear deal signed under his predecessor, calling it a “horrible deal”, saying, “The agreement ends in a very short period of time. So they had a path to nuclear weapons. We cannot allow Iran to have a path to nuclear weapons.”
The situation between Iran and the United States has been escalating since Iran announced in May that it would partially withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal which the Obama administration, Iran and the European Union signed in 2015 – the Trump administration withdrew from the deal in May 2018, re-imposing sanctions on Iran.
The EU does not support the president’s position on the nuclear deal, which they are still trying to rescue, while France, Germany and the UK have created the INSTEX SAS (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), specifically to enable essential trade to continue despite US sanctions.
“We have to get economic support because the Palestinians don’t have money, and we have to help the Palestinians with some money, because they don’t have it and one of the groups that you get are some of those countries in the Middle East that do have money. So they’re going to play a role in the peace plan, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said during the Oval Office press conference.
The president also described the exchange of personal letters with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying, “Just a nice letter back and forth. He wrote me a beautiful letter on (my) birthday. It was my birthday, as you know, last week. He wrote me a beautiful letter, I thought it was very nice. And just, two friendly letters. We get along very well.”