WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday he is weighing a more measured path in the conflict with Iran, describing an “easy, relaxed” strategy that would rely increasingly on economic pressure to weaken Tehran.
“I’m their banker,” Trump said.
In an interview with Wayne Allyn Root of Real America’s Voice, Trump expressed frustration with what he called Iran’s “devious” negotiators and suggested he could simply “bop along” while using financial leverage to gain the upper hand.
“We could just keep it alone, and they’re going to fail. We could just keep, you know, doing sort of just like nice and easy, relaxed,” Trump said.
“I’m sort of negotiating. You see, they’re very devious negotiators because they’ll agree to something, then they’ll go out and tell the press that they never agreed to it. They’re very dishonest people.”
Trump said the United States has multiple ways to proceed.
“We have three strategies,” he said. “Do what I’m doing now, just bop along and look how bad they’re doing because their nation’s, they’ve got 300% inflation. They have no value. Their currency has almost no value. They’re not paying their soldiers. Their soldiers are leaving. So just keep that going because that’s not sustainable.”
He said another possible course would be to “hit them really, really hard.”
“Or really the third is just beat them economically, but we’re doing that anyway,” Trump added. “That’s sort of a part of the first one. So economically, they are a mess. They can’t borrow money. We control their money, what they had, which is a lot. They had a lot, and we have total control of it.
“I’m their banker. I am their banker.”
Asked by Root about the possible effect of the war on the November midterm elections, Trump said, “I’m in this thing for one primary reason: that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. So now they can’t.”
Trump has been attempting for months to negotiate an end to the war that began on Feb. 28 — with a cease-fire in place since April 8 and a memorandum of understanding that he signed June 17 crumbling last month when Iran attacked commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Treasury Department on Monday touted the fact that Iran’s currency has lost about 20% of its value during the war and that Trump’s reimposed naval blockade has reduced the nation’s prewar loading of exports of 1.8 million barrels of oil per day to around .5 million barrels per day.
Iranian officials have met Trump’s rhetoric with defiance, with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei posting Monday on X that “Iran is in a strategic, fateful confrontation with Global Arrogance.”
