Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on ‘life support’

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on “life support.”

“It’s unbelievably weak,” Trump says of the truce while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, a day after he rejected the proposal submitted by Iran over the weekend for a permanent ceasefire.

Trump claims that Iranian negotiators told their American counterparts that they were prepared for the US to retrieve Tehran’s stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, but then refrained from putting that concession in the response paper submitted over the weekend.

Iran has shown no public indication that it is prepared to make such a concession.

“Two days ago, they said, ‘You’re going to have to take it.’ We were going to go with them. But they changed their mind because they didn’t put it in the paper,” Trump tells reporters.

Trump claims Iran’s negotiators said that the uranium stockpiles are difficult to retrieve due to Washington’s strikes on Tehran’s nuclear sites last year, and that only the US or China have the tools capable of pulling it out from underground.

He also claims that Iranian negotiators had also “guarantee[d that they wouldn’t obtain] nuclear weapons for a very long period of time,” only to leave that out of Tehran’s official proposal as well.

The fact that Trump indicates he would have accepted such a guarantee, even though it was not indefinite, appears to be out of step with his longstanding insistence that he intends to ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.

Asked whether he still thinks he can make a deal with the current regime, he responds in the affirmative, while adding that it is comprised of moderates who desperately want to reach an agreement and “lunatics” who want to keep fighting.

Addressing criticism that he has no coherent plan in dealing with Iran, Trump insists, “I do have a plan. The plan is Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

He then goes on to repeat his unproven claim that the US sent Kurdish militants guns for use against the Iranian regime but that the Kurds decided to keep them.