By Doyna Chiaku and David Leggeren
US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened Iran over explosions and side taxes if Tehran does not reach an agreement with Washington on its nuclear program.
In his first statement after Iran rejected direct talks with Washington last week, he told NBC News that we and Iranian officials were talking, but they did not give details.
“If they don’t contract, it will be a bombing,” Trump said in a telephone interview. “It will be a bombing of those who have not seen it as they have already.
“It is possible that if they don’t contract, I will pay a secondary tax on them as four years ago,” he said.
Tehran’s foreign minister said Iran had sent a reply to Trump’s letter to a new nuclear deal through Oman, saying it had a policy not to negotiate directly with the United States as it was under the election campaign.
Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian on Sunday reaffirmed the policy. Referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he said direct talks had been rejected (with the United States), but Iran had always participated in indirect talks.
In an interview with NBC, Trump also threatened a so-called secondary tax, which affects buyers of a country’s goods on both Russia and Iran. Last week, he signed an executive order that would allow such taxes on Venezuelan oil buyers.
Trump didn’t discuss the possibility of the possible tariffs.
In its first round of 2017-21, Trump withdrew the United States from a 2015 deal between Iranian and world powers, which put a strict limit to Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for aiding sanctions.
Trump also repeated US sanctions. Since then, the Islamic Republic has crossed many agreements on the uranium enrichment program.
Talan has so far denied Trump’s warnings to make a deal or face military consequences.
Western powers accuse Iran of having a secret agenda to develop nuclear weapons capacity by enriching uranium to a high-faced level, and above what they say is justified for a civil nuclear program.
Tehran says its nuclear program is entirely for civil energy purposes.
(Report of Doyna Chiaku and David Longgren in Washington; Eloel Eluli and Paris Hafez in Dubai; Montage by David Lenggren and Rod Nickel))