Trump on Iran: 'We have all the power'
In a call with the Israeli prime minister, President Donald Trump told ABC News that he told Benjamin Netanyahu to "use his judgment" but warned not to hurt his effort to get a peace deal with Iran.
"I don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the deal, but I said, 'You have to use your own judgment.' Just go out and use your own judgment, but I don't want the deal to be hurt," Trump told ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl in a telephone interview on Monday.
The president insisted that negotiations with Iran are actively going on and that "we're trying to finish it up." Trump said he wouldn't say it's "complicated," saying, "It's actually pretty simple. It's the one with the power wins. We have all the power."
He said that some of his "best friends" want him to start bombing again, but that "they don't understand." A resumption of wide-scale U.S. military attacks, he said, would be costly and result in the Strait of Hormuz being closed for months longer.
In a post on social media this morning, Trump said peace talks toward a deal are proceeding "subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way." Asked what he meant by that, Trump told ABC News, "If people are stupid, we'll end up in something where we have to wipe out an entire infrastructure of a nation, and I don't think that's a good thing, because somebody's going to have to rebuild it."
He suggested that if the U.S. destroyed Iran’s infrastructure, the U.S. would likely end up helping to pay to rebuild it.
"Somebody's going to have to build all that infrastructure, new bridges, new this, new that, new power plants. You know, they're talking about a trillion dollars, probably more. And you know that's why we'll probably get involved in rebuilding, right, helping them rebuild," he said.
Asked if that would be like a Marshall Plan for Iran, Trump responded, "Yeah," then quickly added, "But we'll get half their oil."
