Middle East crisis live: Trump claims ‘I don’t make bad deals’ as questions remain over negotiation progress | Middle East and north Africa
‘If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one,’ Donald Trump posts online
Donald Trump has given an update of sorts about the ceasefire negotiations with Iran and the apparent lack of detail, adding that talks are still ongoing.
The US president wrote on Truth Social: “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.
“Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet. So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.
“Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!”
Key events
Donald Trump encouraged Arab leaders to sign onto the Abraham Accords on Saturday during a conversation about the Iran deal, Axios reports.
The Arab and Muslim leaders were surprised by the US president’s request and stayed silent on the call, prompting Trump to jokingly ask if the leaders were still there.
The Abraham Accords, brokered by the first Trump administration, sought to normalize relations between Israel and some Arab and Muslim nations.
During Saturday’s call with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, Trump told them that if a deal to end the US-Israel war in Iran was achieved, he would like for the nations to sign onto the accords.
Currently, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The Trump-brokered accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, “proved to be dangerously counterproductive, with Israeli-Gulf military cooperation leading to more risky and provocative behavior”, according to a recent Foreign Policy magazine piece written by Matt Duss, an analyst with the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders.
“Far from promoting peace and stability, the Abraham Accords laid the groundwork for a new era of violence, providing political cover for genocide in Gaza and enabling a reckless war against Iran,” Duss added.
Marco Rubio scolds BBC reporter for asking about deadly strike on Iranian school
Robert Mackey
At a news conference in India on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, scolded a BBC reporter for asking if the deadly strike on a school in Minab, Iran on the first day of the US-Israeli attack, and strikes on another 21 schools in the following weeks, was “reckless”.
Tom Bateman, the BBC state department correspondent, who asked Rubio about the strike, which visual analysis by news organizations has suggested was carried out by the US but the Pentagon says it is still investigating, first asked the secretary of state to reveal what the Trump administration knew about the strike on 2 March.
On Sunday, the reporter pointed out to Rubio that, while “there’s a lot of attention at the moment on how to end this war … there is continued scrutiny on the way it began.” He reminded the top US diplomat, who is also Donald Trump’s national security adviser, that the first wave of strikes was launched by the US and Israel on “a Saturday in Iran in the morning when millions of children were at school.”
“There is media analysis that 22 schools at least were damaged either that day or in the following weeks,” the reporter added. “What do you say to those who will accuse the administration of unleashing a reckless action because of when this war was begun?
Rubio avoided responding directly to the question, but instead attacked the questioner for not framing the US bombing campaign as a response to what he called terrorism linked to Iran’s government.
“I’m not going to speak to military tactics simply because that’s not my department,” Rubio said. “I will say this to you: when we when this conflict began with Iran, the goals were outlined and they were very simple. They were very clear. We were going to destroy their navy, which we’ve done. We were going to significantly reduce their ability … to launch ballistic missiles because that was the conventional shield they were trying to hide behind. And we’ve achieved that objective. And we were going to do damage to the defense industrial base so they couldn’t rebuild all of these things. We’ve achieved that as well.”
“Those were the targets of our operation and that’s what they were targeted on,” the secretary of state said. “On the other hand, Iran likes to sponsor proxy groups of terrorists and these terrorists don’t care what they blow up. They blow up anything and everyone.”
“This is an Iran that not long ago through their Hezbollah proxies blew up a Jewish center in Argentina and killed a bunch of people,” Rubio went on, apparently referring to a terrorist attack in Buenos Aires that took place 32 years ago, in 1994.
He went on to describe the use of roadside bombs to kill or maim US troops in Iraq as terrorism, although attacks on soldiers do not meet the definition of terrorism used by most experts.
“There is no nation on earth that sponsors more terrorism than Iran,” he added. “They’ve spent not they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars sponsoring terrorism and targeting individuals all over the world and including civilians.”
“That’s what you should be asking me about,” Rubio told Bateman. “That’s what the BBC should be covering. And that’s what these other media outlets should be covering is how evil these people are in Iran and the damage they’ve done to people all over the world.”
Foreign ministers from eight Arab-Islamic nations have condemned the actions of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli security minister, after he posted a video of detained Gaza flotilla activists.
The video showed the activists, who intended to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, kneeling with their hands bound.
The eight nations – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan – said in a statement: “Ben-Gvir’s deliberate public humiliation of detainees is a disgraceful assault on human dignity and a clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, and international human rights law.”
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told The New York Times an agreement with Iran had garnered regional support but a nuclear deal couldn’t be achieved “in 72 hours on the back of a napkin”.
His comments came after Donald Trump told his negotiators “not to rush into a deal” with Iran to end the three-month war.
Rubio said on Sunday: “We’re not kicking it till later. Nuclear talks are highly technical matters. You can’t do a nuclear thing in 72 hours on the back of a napkin.
“So right now, we have seven or eight countries in the region that are endorsing this approach, and we’re prepared to move forward on this approach.”
‘If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one,’ Donald Trump posts online
Donald Trump has given an update of sorts about the ceasefire negotiations with Iran and the apparent lack of detail, adding that talks are still ongoing.
The US president wrote on Truth Social: “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama, which gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon.
“Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet. So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.
“Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!”
Trouble may be brewing for the US-Iran deal as parties work to finalize an agreement. According to Al Jazeera English correspondent Ali Hashem, the US may be attempting to retreat on two key negotiating items: unfreezing Iranian assets and the extent of a ceasefire in Lebanon.
According to Hashem’s Iranian source, Israel seems to be pressuring the US to include language that would allow for further Israeli military operations in Lebanon. Iran is insistent on the ceasefire extending to Lebanon, as well.
“Tehran has informed all mediators, including Pakistan, that it will not sign the memorandum unless all clauses are fully agreed and guaranteed,” Hashem reports. “The overall picture suggests Tehran increasingly views Washington as backing away from earlier understandings reached through mediators.”
Naim Qassem, the chief of Hezbollah, said on Sunday he hoped the Iran agreement would be completed soon and include Hezbollah in the terms.
“God willing, this agreement will be finalized and there are signs of its completion, and accordingly that we too will be among those included in this agreement – an agreement of a full cessation of hostilities,” he said in a televised address, according to AFP.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Sunday that Donald Trump said he supported Israel’s fight against Hezbollah.
US government still obstructing some clauses of agreement to end war, says Iranian state media
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said that the US government is still obstructing some clauses of the agreement to end the war, including the issue of releasing blocked Iranian assets, according to Reuters. Some details of the deal are still unknown and nothing has been officially signed yet.
Axios and CBS report that the agreement with Iran is not expected to be signed today, with an anonymous senior Trump official telling Axios there are a number of details that still need to be finalized.
The senior official also said that the Iranian government at the moment moves slowly and that it may take several days for the agreement to go through all the approvals.
The chief of the Lebanese Hezbollah group said their disarmament is unacceptable, amounting to “annihilation”, according to the AFP news service.