Trump bemoans Iranians stalling after 11-hour meeting
President donald Trump criticized Iran’s government for stalling during an 11-hour negotiation meeting, expressing pessimism about reaching a deal. He lamented that Iran’s negotiators often prolong discussions and make needless changes,claiming they haven’t gained anything from previous negotiations. Trump also compared Iran’s negotiation tactics unfavorably to past U.S. presidents and accused Iran of becoming more powerful over four decades of unproductive negotiations. He blamed Iran’s internal power struggles and fragmented leadership,following the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei,for their slow progress. Trump has recently taken a hard stance, ending talks and conducting strikes against Iran, which responded by expanding its target list in the Gulf, notably around the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump bemoaned the Iranian government’s penchant for stalling after an alleged 11-hour meeting on Sunday.
Trump continued his descent into pessimism over the possibility of a deal with Iran on Monday morning. By the president’s own account, Iranian negotiators held an 11-hour meeting on Sunday to discuss details of the agreement under negotiation, much to the annoyance of the U.S. negotiators.
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“So, something that nobody knows: Yesterday, they had an 11-hour meeting. Everything’s 11 hours with these guys. You know, you can’t settle one sentence in one hour and one minute — It should be one minute,” Trump said during a call to Fox News’s Fox and Friends.
“And everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say we had to make a couple of changes,” he added. “I said, ‘Changes? They got to make changes? We’re not going to make changes.’ Always changes.”
Trump noted the Iranians’ penchant for negotiating, but argued that their experience hadn’t made them any better.
“They’re professional negotiators. That’s all they are … I don’t even call them good at it. They haven’t gotten anything. They got nothing from me,” he said. “But if you look for 47 years, they’ve been tapping people along, presidents. Every president got tapped along, didn’t do anything, and they became more and more powerful. This should have been done 47 years ago.”
The president went on to deride the approaches to Iran of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and most of all, Barack Obama. He cut former President Joe Biden some slack, because “he probably had nothing to say because he was such a stupid person.”
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Iran’s fractured power structure after the assassination of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can be partly credited for the agonizing pace of Iranian negotiators, who must get approval from several different power centers.
Trump definitively soured on Iran last week, declaring the memorandum of understanding with Iran “over” and launching several heavy waves of strikes against the country. Iran responded in kind, expanding its target list to include the whole gulf by Sunday. The U.S. strikes have focused on Iran’s coast, showcasing the new focus of the war on opening up the Strait of Hormuz.
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