Trump says “there will be bombing” if Iran does not make nuclear deal

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with bombings and secondary tariffs on Sunday if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear programme.

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”

In his first 2017-21 term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed strict limits on Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump also reimposed sweeping U.S. sanctions. Since then the Islamic Republic has far surpassed the agreed limits in its escalating program of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has so far rebuffed Trump’s warning to make a deal or face military consequences.

Iran sent a response through Oman to Trump’s letter in which he urged Tehran to reach a new nuclear deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was cited as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Thursday.

Western powers accuse Iran of having a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy programme.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes.

Earlier, a top UN official pushed world powers and Iran to urgently work to restore a 2015 deal that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program, warning that its “success or failure matters to all of us.”

Iran’s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia and China is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal.

“Though diplomacy is the best option, the United States has also been clear a nuclear Iran can never be an option. We are prepared to use all elements of national power to ensure that outcome,” deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood told the council.

European and Iranian diplomats met late last month to discuss whether they can work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump’s return to the White House in January for a second four-year term.