US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday (21) that Iran wants the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, but argued that the end of the American blockade of Iranian ports would harm the prospects for a peace agreement.
“Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open so they can make $500 million a day,” Trump wrote in a post on the social media site Truth Social.
“They only say they want the strait closed because I completely BLOCKED it (CLOSED!), so they just want to ‘keep up appearances,’” the president added in the post.
He went on to state that “Four days ago, some people came to me saying, ‘Sir, Iran wants to open the Strait immediately.’”
“But if we do this,” Trump said, “there will never be a deal with Iran unless we destroy the rest of the country, including its leaders!”
The comments come after Trump said that until Tehran came up with a proposal to end the conflict permanently.
He said he instructed the American military to continue blockading Iranian ports.
Deadlock in negotiations
Iran’s envoy to the United Nations said he believes further negotiations will be held from Pakistan’s capital to Iranian ports.
“As soon as Washington ends the naval blockade, I believe the next round of negotiations will take place in Islamabad,” Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN, told reporters this Tuesday (21), at UN headquarters in New York, according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA.
