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The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said Tuesday that he has instructed his advisors to destroy Iran if he murders him.
“If they did that, they would be erased,” Trump said in an exchange with journalists as he signed what he called a “hard” presidential memorandum that asks the United States government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran.
“I have left instructions if they do, they will be deleted, nothing will be left.”
The Department of Justice announced in federal positions in November that an Iranian plot to kill Trump before the presidential elections had been frustrated.
The department claimed that Iranian officials had ordered Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveillance and finally killing Trump. Shakeri is still free in Iran.
Trump said he would be willing to meet his Iranian counterpart to try to persuade Iran to give up what the United States believes Tehran’s efforts are to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump also said that Iran is too close to having a nuclear weapon and that the United States has the right to block the sale of Iranian oil to other nations.
The comments were ahead of a White House meeting between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.
Trump accused former President Joe Biden of not rigorously enforcing oil export sanctions, which Trump says he emboldened Tehran by allowing him to sell oil to finance a program of nuclear weapons and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” the enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the level of weapons of approximately 90%, said UN nuclear surveillance head to Reuters in December. Iran has denied having wanted to develop a nuclear weapon.
The Trump memorandum, among other things, orders the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to impose “maximum economic pressure” to Iran, including the sanctions and application mechanisms of people who violate existing sanctions.
It also orders the Treasury and the State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “promoting Iran’s oil exports to zero.” The oil prices of the United States reduced the losses on Tuesday in the news that Trump planned to sign the memorandum, which compensated for a certain weakness of the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing O/R.
Iran’s mission before the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Tehran oil exports generated $ 53 billion in 2023 and $ 54 billion a year before, according to estimates of the United States Energy Information Administration. The departure for 2024 was executed at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had taken Iran’s oil exports to about zero during part of his first mandate after imposing sanctions. They rose under the mandate of Biden when Iran managed to evade the sanctions.
The International Energy Agency based in Paris believes that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other OPEC members have a leftover ability to compensate for any lost export of Iran, also a member of the OPEC.
Push for Snapback Sanctions
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese companies buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a commercial system that mainly uses Chinese yuan and a network of intermediaries, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at Clearview Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Iranian oil law to reduce some Iranian barrels.
The ship, which the Biden administration did not enforce foreign measures and refineries that process the oil exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said that a movement last month for the Group of Puerto de Shandong to ban oil tankers sanctioned by the United States to call their ports in the province of Eastern China, points out that the impact ship could have.
Trump also ordered his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the Snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran”, by virtue of a 2015 agreement between Iran and the key world powers that raised the sanctions to Tehran in return of restrictions to its nuclear program.
The United States resigned from the agreement in 2018, during Trump’s first mandate, and Iran began to move away from his commitments related to the agreement under the agreement. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of the sanctions under the agreement in 2020, but the measure was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Great Britain, France and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready, if necessary, to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions against Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such measures on October 18 when an UN resolution of 2015 expires. The resolution enshrines Iran’s agreement with Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia and China that raised the sanctions to Tehran in return of restrictions to its nuclear program.
The UN ambassador of Iran, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “setback” of the sanctions against Tehran would be “illegal and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss whether they could work to calm regional tensions, including Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
—With additional reuters files
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
