President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared the nuclear deal with Iran “over” and labeled its leaders “scum,” just weeks after admitting he agreed to the pact to avert a global economic calamity. Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Trump disparaged the same Iranian officials he had recently praised as moderate and reasonable.
Trump's Harsh Remarks at NATO Summit
“I don’t want to deal with them, but they’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum, they’re sick people, they’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people,” Trump told reporters during a photo opportunity with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars. We make a deal, and if I make a deal with him, we have a deal. He goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone’s agreed, no nuclear weapons. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press, they say we never even talked about it. Is something wrong with them? They’re cuckoo,” he added.
Renewed Military Strikes and Oil Impact
The comments came as the U.S. military announced another round of attacks on Iranian targets around the Persian Gulf, in response to Iranian strikes on oil and natural gas tankers using an unauthorized channel through the Strait of Hormuz. Before the conflict, traffic flowed freely through the strait, which carries a fifth of the world’s crude oil. Oil prices rose Tuesday following Trump’s statement.
From Peace Deal to Breakdown
Just three weeks earlier, at the G7 summit in France on June 17, Trump had boasted about the “memorandum of understanding” that ended the war he initiated on Feb. 28 without consulting Congress or traditional allies, except Israel, which participated in the attacks.
“The one thing I didn’t want to see is I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump said then. “If you kept this going, that could have happened.” He admitted that dwindling global oil reserves and impending economic disaster drove him to end the conflict.
Now, with the deal unraveled and hostilities renewed, the region faces renewed uncertainty. The rapid shift from diplomacy to confrontation underscores the volatility of U.S.-Iran relations under the Trump administration.
