Trump Says US To Be Paid “Guardian Of Middle East” If Iran Fails Deal Terms

Washington:

US President Donald Trump has claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost “derailed” the Iran peace deal with the airstrike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, which he said had delayed the agreement between Washington and Tehran. Trump also called Netanyahu “a very difficult guy” and claimed that Israel “should be very thankful” to the US for negotiating a peace deal, deterring Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. 

“He’s a very difficult guy,” the US leader said of Netanyahu during a phone interview with The New York Times.

“And to be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for two hours,” he added.

The US, as well as Iran, has said that they agreed to an “immediate and permanent” end to military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The deal is scheduled to be signed on June 19 in Switzerland and will lay guidelines for opening the commercial shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz and the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. 

But it could be difficult for Israel to accept, which has not been included in the peace negotiations and did not immediately respond to news of the agreement on the US-Iran deal.

It has been reported that Israeli PM Netanyahu has domestic political reasons to continue pursuing the conflict with Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Middle East Guardian

Trump also told the NYT that if leadership in Tehran failed to reach a final nuclear accord with the United States within the stipulated timeframe set in the terms of the deal, the US military would restart attacks on Iran or make the United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20 per cent of the region’s revenues.

Trump also claimed the memorandum of understanding he reached with Iran would ultimately ensure that the shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz is “permanently toll-free”.

When asked if American allies in the Gulf, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have agreed to his assertion that America would, if necessary, become a paid police force for the Middle East, Trump did not offer a direct answer, suggesting instead that he had just begun to discuss the issue. 

“It would only happen,” he suggested, “if Iran remained an adversary.”

Trump called the current leadership of Iran, including the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, pragmatists. The description was vastly different from the one he took on the opening day of the war, when he urged the Iranian people to rise and take over their government once the American and Israeli bombing was complete.