Fresh tit-for-tat military exchanges between the United States and Iran have collapsed a weeks-old truce between the two nations, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday during press remarks on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. Striking an uncompromising tone, Trump said the ceasefire negotiated between Washington and Tehran in mid-June was finished, and launched a scathing verbal attack on the Iranian leadership, labeling Iranian officials “scum”, “sick”, “cuckoo” and repeated liars who cannot be trusted to uphold agreements.
The collapse of the ceasefire comes after a night of escalating military action: the U.S. launched overnight airstrikes against more than 80 Iranian targets, including fast attack speedboats, in a retaliatory move for Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed it had launched counterstrikes against U.S. military bases positioned across the Persian Gulf. The news of the collapsed truce immediately roiled global energy markets, with benchmark crude oil prices jumping 5% within minutes of Trump’s comments, reflecting widespread investor anxiety over disruptions to global energy supplies flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them any more, they’re scum,” Trump told reporters when asked directly about the status of the truce. “They’re scum, they’re sick people, they’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”
Trump accused Iran of systematically violating the terms of the June 17 ceasefire agreement, and repeatedly misrepresenting the core commitments that had been on the table. He noted that the tentative truce centered on a ban on Iranian nuclear weapons development, but that Iranian officials immediately walked away from that commitment after the deal was signed, publicly denying that discussions around the nuclear program had ever taken place. “Everyone’s agreed, no nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, joke to the press, they say we never even talked about it. There’s something wrong with them, they’re cuckoo,” he added.
While the U.S. president says he believes the truce is irreparably broken, he left open the possibility that informal negotiations could continue through the American negotiating team led by businessman Steve Witkoff and Trump’s own son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner. But Trump insisted any path back to formal talks would have to be initiated by Tehran, and he made clear he sees little value in continuing negotiations. “Frankly, I don’t want to waste my time with them. Now, I’ll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don’t see it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars,” he said.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who was meeting with Trump when the president made his remarks, publicly backed the U.S. overnight strikes, saying the retaliatory action against Iran was “absolutely necessary”. “It was a very strong response, and I’m with you on this,” Rutte told reporters.
Despite Rutte’s public support for the strikes, Trump once again criticized NATO as an alliance for failing to join the U.S. in its confrontation with Iran, which he repeatedly labels the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism. He said he was dissatisfied with the refusal of key NATO allies including the United Kingdom, Germany and France to contribute military support to the U.S. campaign against Tehran. “I’m not happy with NATO because of the fact that they didn’t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that’s Iran. They were unwilling to help us,” Trump said.
He went on to call out the specific responses he received from key European allies: “I spoke with UK, and the prime minister said, ‘well, we don’t want to help you now, but we’ll help you when the war is over.’ I said that’s not good. And likewise, I spoke to Germany, they didn’t want to help. Spoke to France, didn’t want to help.”