President Donald Trump said he believes the 60-day ceasefire with Iran is “over,” after U.S. warplanes and missiles hit more than 80 targets following attacks from the regime on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Trump stopped short of ending negotiations with Iran, but said: “I’ll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate they’re good people — Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner — but they have to come back to me, and as far as I’m concerned it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”
Recommended Stories
He excoriated the Iranian regime as “sick” and “scum.”
“They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people, and if they had a nuclear weapon they’d use it.”
US SAYS IT DESTROYED OVER 60 IRANIAN BOATS AFTER COMMERCIAL SHIPS TARGETED IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
Like Trump, Mhammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and a top negotiator for Tehran, suggested that the ceasefire had formally ended.
“The era of bullying and extortion is over,” he wrote in a statement on X. “We don’t fold.”
Iran targeted U.S. military sites in the Gulf on Wednesday after the U.S. responded to Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and reinstated sanctions on its oil sales.
On Tuesday, CENTCOM announced it hit more than 80 targets, including more than 60 Iranian small boats.
“U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces completed a new round of offensive strikes against Iran, July 7, hitting over 80 targets with precision munitions as an immediate response to Iran’s latest attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said in a statement Tuesday night.
A Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran had set out a 60-day period for the two countries to finalize a larger agreement that would include Iran’s nuclear program, a deadline that will expire in the middle of August.
But the ceasefire has been repeatedly undermined by Iranian actions, with Tuesday’s strikes resulting in Trump’s response.
The U.S. and Iran had previously traded strikes even after the memorandum had been signed, yet, unlike in the past, Tuesday’s salvo saw Iran retaliate directly against American targets. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps followed up overnight with coordinated missile and drone attacks on the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. IRGC officials further claimed that they had shot down an American drone released to counteract the Iranian attacks.
U.S. officials did not immediately say if the Iranian attacks resulted in any American casualties.
Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. would resume its bombing campaign against Iran should ceasefire talks fail to yield results.
TRUMP SAYS HE DOESN’T THINK US WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR FATAL STRIKE ON IRANIAN SCHOOL
Trump is slated to meet Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the Ankara summit later on Wednesday. The president has previously floated that Syria should take an active hand in dealing with Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group operating out of Lebanon, even though the country has previously avoided entering into the conflict.
Al-Sharaa visited Trump at the White House last year, raising some eyebrows given his previous associations with Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Al-Nusra front, the rebel group opposing former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s reign.
