Donald Trump has laid out his plans to take dramatic action against Iran if a deal isn’t struck imminently.
Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst appeared on Fox & Friends Weekend Sunday, following a conversation with the 80-year old president.
“I just spoke with President Trump about the situation with Iran,” Yingst said from Tel Aviv. “He tells Fox News he’s in a ‘deciding mode,’ and that ‘very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future.’”
Yingst shared: “The president described the current choices on the table as ‘wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal.’
“He added, ‘My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave.’”
The U.N. general assembly is taking place in New York next week, with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed to be in attendance.
Asked if he’d be willing to meet with Pezeshkian at the summit, Trump said that he’d “‘probably be open to it,’ but described this weekend as ‘no different from any other weekend.’”
Back in the studio, host Charles Hurt asked whether Trump clarified his timeline of the “not-so-different future” within which he means to take action.
According to Yingst, Trump didn’t specify exactly how soon he was going to make his move, but also seemed doubtful about the odds of making a deal—with the president claiming that “some of the officials are hiding like rats” to avoid diplomatic efforts.
Trump’s war with Iran, which began with joint Israeli strikes on February 28, was originally marketed to be concluded with just a few weeks.
After months of his son-in-law Jared Kushner and property magnate Steve Witkoff failing to make a deal, it seems the president is falling back on threats.
Last week, Trump made similarly nation-ending warnings to Axios. “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me,” he said.
Unfortunately for Trump, his threats seem to have gone unheeded, with the Iran-backed Houthis hitting U.S. ally Saudi Arabia with a missile attack on Riyadh Saturday.
Meanwhile, the war with Iran has seen rising U.S. casualties, inflated oil and gas prices, and tanked Trump’s approval rates as the conflict stretches further towards midterms.
