U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his patience with Iran had “already run out,” reiterating his calls for the Islamic Republic to surrender unconditionally and give up its entire nuclear program.
Speaking as he watched the installation of a new flagpole on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump said his calls for Tehran to surrender “means I’ve had it,” per the pool report. “I give up, no more, we go and blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place,” Trump added.
“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump told reporters when asked if he had decided whether to participate in Israel’s military operation against Iran’s nuclear sites.
“You know, war is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made. So I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we want anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress,” he stated.
Trump claimed the Islamic regime had suggested sending negotiators to the White House for renewed nuclear talks, but noted it was “very late.”
“I said it’s very late to be talking. We may meet. There’s a big difference between now and a week ago, right? Big difference,” he told reporters.
“For 40 years, they’ve been saying ‘Death to America, Death to Israel’ … they were bullies, they were school yard bullies, and now they’re not bullies anymore. But we’ll see what happens, right?” Trump said.
The president said he had given Tehran 60 days to come to a deal but that it had insisted on enriching uranium. “I tried to do it nicely, and then, on day 61, I said, ‘Let’s go,’ because we can’t let that happen.”
Iran now “got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate,” he said.
The Islamic Republic’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York subsequently issued a denial, claiming on X that “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”
Tehran “does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance,” Iran’s mission wrote. “Iran shall respond to any threat with a counter-threat, and to any action with reciprocal measures.”
“The only thing more despicable than his lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader,” the U.N. mission’s statement added.
On Tuesday, Trump convened his national security cabinet in the White House Situation Room amid reports that he was considering joining the war. He then posted an update on his Truth Social website, declaring: “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”
The president further asserted that Washington knows “exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader‘ is hiding,” though he said that the 86-year-old Iranian leader remains safe—for now.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that U.S. involvement in the war would be “100% to its own detriment,” threatening that “the damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter.”
“The harm the U.S. will suffer will definitely be irreparable if they enter this conflict militarily,” the supreme leader added, and responded to Trump’s call for Iranian surrender by stating, “It isn’t wise to tell the Iranian nation to surrender.”