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President Donald Trump challenged the “strange” Iranian negotiators to “get serious” about a deal to end the fighting Thursday.
“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange,'” Trump wrote in a Thursday morning Truth Social post. “They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.’
“WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!”
The comments sharpened a threat delivered a day earlier by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said Trump was prepared to “unleash hell” if Iran refused to accept a deal. Leavitt said Iran had “already been defeated” and warned the regime not to “miscalculate again,” arguing that continued resistance would bring even heavier U.S. retaliation.
TRUMP VOWS TO HIT IRAN ‘VERY HARD’ AFTER OBLITERATING NEARLY ’90 PERCENT’ OF REGIME MISSILES
“President Trump does not bluff, and he is prepared to unleash hell,” Leavitt said at the beginning of Wednesday’s White House press briefing. “Iran should not miscalculate again. Their last miscalculation cost them their senior leadership, their navy, their air force and their air defense system.
“Any violence beyond this point will be because the Iranian regime refused to understand they have already been defeated and refused to come to a deal.”
Trump also lashed out at NATO, accusing alliance members of doing “absolutely nothing” to help confront Iran as the conflict entered its fourth week.
“NATO nations have done absolutely nothing to help with the lunatic nation, now militarily decimated, of Iran,” Trump wrote in a separate Truth Social post. “The U.S.A. needs nothing from NATO, but ‘never forget’ this very important point in time!”
DEFIANT IRAN VOWS TO FIGHT ‘UNTIL COMPLETE VICTORY,’ DESPITE HEAVY MILITARY LOSSES
The back-to-back statements come as Trump’s five-day deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is coming by this weekend – as the administration tries to force Tehran to the table while projecting that U.S. military operations have badly weakened Iran’s leadership, air defenses and naval capacity.
At a Union Station fundraiser for the National Congressional Committee on Wednesday night, Trump joked that he had to stop referring to the “military action” on Iran as a “war,” because the latter requires congressional approval.
“I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say if you use the word ‘war,’ that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” Trump told the crowd of GOP lawmakers at the fundraiser dinner that raised a record-breaking $36.8 million for the NRCC, which seeks to fund the midterms to help keep the narrow House GOP majority (217-214).
WATCH LEAVITT’S WARNING TO IRAN:
“They don’t like the word ‘war’ because you’re supposed to get approval. So, I’ll use the word ‘military operation’, which is really what it is. It’s a military decimation.”
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